Autumn Update

I have so much I could share on this blog, but I've been completely exhausted! Autumn has settled in and it's messing with my sleep, making my bones ache, causing me inflammation all over, and giving me anxiety. I've had to work harder than I'm used to over the past couple of weeks between my actual job, traveling to Minnesota, and work that has to be done at home. Yesterday my body rebelled and told me to stop. I was so exhausted that even eating took too much energy, and I got a fever while eating each meal, followed by some unpleasant time in the bathroom. My body didn't want to spend any energy on digestion. Eating was so draining that I was feeling very faint and had to lay down for a few hours twice.

I'm finding that every autumn I get MUCH worse very suddenly, like hitting a brick wall. While my friends are celebrating the pumpkin spice, all of the colors on the trees, their new fall boots to pair with their leggings, all the festivals, and the cozy hot autumn drinks, I find myself a lot more anxious than normal and in chronic pain again. I'm finding that I'm more argumentative and direct with people, when I actually had a relatively good summer with lots of joking and laughing. My whole mood and personality changes. It's the only seasonal change I'm hyper sensitive to. Winter is actually easier on me, despite the intense negative temperatures that are normal here in North Dakota, but I do feel much more depressed and low than I do during Spring and Summer. I'm clearly living in the wrong state.

I do want to share a few quick things, and they're not necessarily related:

1. This one is for people with mold toxicity, the rest of you can skip reading this one. I'm learning that I need to clean my toilet bowl much more often. After months of trying to decide if this is what's going on, I've determined it has to be the cause: my urine is full of mycotoxins, and I believe the mycotoxins are why mold grows in my toilet bowl so quickly and easily. The toilet hasn't flushed well in the past couple of years, often times I have to flush twice. I think it doesn't flush everything down, which leaves mycotoxins floating in the bowl all night. If any of you have also experienced this, please leave me a comment!

2. I decided to try the Julian Bakery Paleo Bars. The ingredients appear to be safe for me, and a bar that I can actually eat is amazing for travel. It's very appealing. The problem is that even though the sugar content is very low and they use stevia, these spike my blood sugar like nothing else. My blood sugar went from 98 to 160 after eating one of these! I felt awful! This bar doesn't always give me that bad of a spike, but the fact that it can do this is scary. Also, even though it uses chocolate extract I still get a sulfur reaction from these. I can't tolerate sulfur foods, and chocolate is high in sulfur. The taste is actually kind of addictive, which is the problem for me and why I've had more than one. I tried one of the egg white protein bars and it was disgusting - horrible! It had the texture of Laffy Taffy, where I kept chewing and chewing and chewing and it wouldn't break down, and that whole time I was chewing a nasty sour flavor. Not good. I do not recommend.

3. I wish I could love Epic Bars. They're doing a fantastic job at bringing correctly-raised and nutritionally good quality meat to the market. They're using a variety of animals, everything from beef, chicken, and pork to salmon, venison, and wild boar. The problem is that everyone single one of their bars has either fruit, pork products, or too much black pepper. I can't eat sugar in any form, not even fruit. I can't eat pork. I can't tolerate much black pepper. I was at Whole Foods a few weeks ago and found their new Venison bars. The only problem was that it was black pepper flavored, but I decided to give it a try anyway. A little bit of black pepper every once in a while isn't bad for me. Well, the bars are about half meat and half black pepper. I can see people really enjoying the bar, but wow, that was major black pepper overkill for me! I did eat the whole case of them that I bought, but slowly and only when I felt strong enough to handle it. They're tasty! But what it means is that there is still no single Epic Bar that I can eat, despite them being a grass-fed and pasture raised meat brand. Frustrating!

4. Eating a Whole Foods salad for breakfast for a few days in a row really doesn't work well for me. So many raw vegetables, and the meat isn't anything special. It's also turkey, which can make me tired. My poor body doesn't like raw vegetables. :(





I hope to post more soon!

New Blood Sugar Meter

Do you know that feeling where your body is feeling stimulated and it wants to move, but you're feeling very spacey and internally fatigued to the point where it's hard to focus your vision on anything? Yeah, me too. I thought this was due to low blood sugar (because I can get hypoglycemic easily if I don't eat correctly,) but as it turns out, it's not. It makes sense, because when I'm actually low in blood sugar I have a whole host of other symptoms. My blood sugar can be over 120 and I still feel this way. I think it's my thyroid and adrenals actually causing this problem. That's another issue.

I finally bought a blood sugar monitor for home use. What I'm learning is that I start to get spacey, brain fogged, and extra fatigued when I'm below 95, either before or after eating a meal, but I can still use my body and function. I've tested around 80 when I've gone too long without food (meaning more than 2 hours), and I did feel drained and light headed during those times, to the point where it's hard to move if I want to. Most interestingly of all is the fact that I'm testing relatively highest first thing in the morning.  My morning blood sugar has almost always been above 115, once it was 127! Mornings are the messiest time of day for me. I typically wake up feeling groggy, then once I'm fully awake I typically feel loaded with adrenaline. I'm guessing my cortisol is high, but I really need to get a 24 hour cortisol test done to confirm that. What I do know is that my blood sugar is highest during those times. An hour or so after breakfast is when my blood sugar drops. It's not a struggle to keep it above 100 through the day IF I eat meat every 2 hours. When I don't eat meat this often I tend to stay in the lower 90's, even if I eat every 2 hours. My doctor is right, again. (He's the one having me eat protein every 2 hours.)

The other interesting issue I have is that I have a very difficult time getting enough blood for the reading when my blood sugar is low. I can hold my hands under hot water, jump up and down, shake my arms, and rub my arms down into my hands. It's very difficult to get enough blood after lancing myself. When my blood sugar is above 100, it's not even half as difficult to get a good amount of blood.

Which meter did I buy? The best looking one on the shelf - I didn't really research it ahead of time. Let me tell you a quick story first:

I went out and finally bought the monitor based on a really scary situation I had a couple of weeks ago. I was PMSing like something terrible. My sugar craving was out of control. I ended up eating an entire bag of organic dried apple and bananas with cinnamon. In one sitting. It was about 50 mg of sugar in that bag. I haven't done anything like that in the last 3 years on this diet! I've splurged on 85% dark chocolate bars, but I think the caffeine affected me more than the sugar. This was the first time I've had this kind of binge on a high sugar food. I felt jittery and stimulated for about an hour and even had a headache some of that time. Then I sat down with my husband and started laughing about something with him. Mid laughing I crashed. HARD. All the energy drained from me, my right arm went completely numb and I couldn't move it, my heart started palpating down into my stomach, I couldn't see straight or focus on anything, and I started crying uncontrollably while struggling to take breaths. My husband thought I was having a stroke, and he told me I got very pale white. My husband gave me some apple juice. It did help. It took about 5 minutes to start improving, about 30 minutes to feel recovered enough to eat lots of jerky. My biggest problem is that eating sugar makes my blood sugar drop too much, and this case I ate wwwaaaayyyy too much sugar. This was definitely a hypoglycemic/ adrenal crash.

This scared me so much that I went to CVS the next chance I had to buy a glucose meter. After talking to the pharmacist and reading all the boxes, I decided on the CVS Advanced Glucose Meter. The reason is because the test strips are affordable. $12 for 50 and I can buy them without insurance. The pharmacist convinced me it's accurate enough and is easiest to use. I've never used a meter before, so I have nothing to compare it to outside of labs at the hospital.

What I like about this one:
-The fact that it tells me my blood sugar level at home.
-Easy to use, very intuitive
-Large memory bank for my readings

What I don't like about this one:
-I tend to go through about 5 strips before it gives me a reading and not an error message. Part of the problem is that I have a hard time getting enough blood to squeeze out of my fingers, and this meter doesn't need much blood. The main problem is that this machine is very finicky. I read some reviews on the machine and tons of people said that it's accurate enough and the strips are cheap, but they too gets lots of error messages. It's so much fun having to lance myself 3-5 times just to get one reading. Sigh.

-It doesn't come with the specific USB cable needed to upload my results to my computer. Not just any USB cable will work. I had to call CVS customer service, sit on hold for 20 minutes, and request they send me a free cable in the mail. No, you can't just go to CVS and get a cable. No, it doesn't come with the cable. You must call them and ask them to send it to you for free. I'm rolling my eyes about this.

-I question the results a little bit. I don't have confidence in its accuracy. The few times I've retested myself immediately after the first test I got a different reading, usually within 5 points of the first reading. That's not a big deal. Once I had a reading of 122, then when I retested I was 111. That big of a difference bothers me.


Anyway, I want to go take a nice hot bath now. :)

Lesson Learned: Buying Used

I haven't been able to use my computer for about a week. Why? Because my husband bought me an amazing birthday present: a new computer desk! It's an L-shape desk with a hutch, meaning lots of desk space and storage space. The keyboard tray actually pulls out with ease and my fingers don't hit the bottom of the desk as I type! I can cross my legs under the keyboard tray too, because there's actually room to be a human being at this desk! (Can you tell my old desk drove me crazy?) I found this desk for sale and knew I wanted it at first sight. It was very reasonably priced too! But it's used. We bought it directly out of someone's house. I'm not being judgmental by saying this, just observant, but when I walked in the house the first thing I saw was a can of Clorox wipes and a carpet that hadn't been cleaned in years. I don't get around to vacuuming as often as I should either, so I do understand, but it should have been a red flag that this desk was going to make me sick.

I left the desk in the garage for 3 days to off gas and air out. My husband was even bothered by the smell of it at first, and he doesn't really notice smells. I wiped every part of it down in non-chlorine bleach (hydrogen peroxide) about 5 times. After 3 days it smelled a tiny bit, but it didn't seem bad. I really needed my parking spot back because storms were on their way. My father-in-law and husband brought it into my office and set it up for me. It took about an hour before I developed a headache in my office, and then the heartburn and muscle cramps. I knew there was a problem, but I was highly optimistic that with a few more days the desk would stop bothering me. I put lots of little bowls of baking soda all over the desk to absorb the smell and set up my HEPA air filter on full blast.

But that wasn't the only new piece of furniture we bought. Long story short, the only corner in my office where this desk doesn't cover a door or window isn't a true corner, it's got two corners and a diagonal wall. That left space between the desk and the other wall... enough space for a narrow table. So I looked online and found one that fits the space perfectly, then we went out and bought it from another person's house. It was affordable, in excellent condition, the right size, the right color, and the right sturdiness. His home was clean, but he was moving so everything was piled up. I couldn't really detect problems such as cleaners, fragrances, or smoke. We brought the shelf home and I stuck my nose into it in the garage. It had a mild old apartment smell, but after I washed it down with non-chlorine bleach I couldn't smell it anymore. I figured it was safe. Boy was I wrong! We brought it into my office, put it between the desk and the wall, and I set up my stuff on it. It looks and feels great! It's perfect! But the office smelled 2x worse and I was reacting pretty strongly to it for several days after the shelf got moved in. I still only smell the desk, not the shelf, but my reactions were made much worse after the shelf moved in.

I'm not this stupid. Really, I knew better. I was just very excited. I also believed that used had the potential to be safer than new due to the off gassing of formaldehyde from particle board. We couldn't afford a new desk that was made from better material, and the affordable glass desks were actually worse than I what I already had.

So for a full week now I've kept the windows open, my air filter on full blast with a new filter, my salt lamp on, lots of baking soda cups around the desk and shelf, and the door shut. I've left the office alone to detox for a full week.

I'm in the office right now. Without my Vog Mask it's tolerable, but still makes me mildly sick to my stomach with a mild headache after about 15 minutes. With my Vog Mask I've been in here for about an hour. I feel extra fatigued and have a general "gross" feeling on my skin, but the Vog Mask is helping quite a bit. I know I'm doing no favor to my health being in my office, but since it's finally tolerable, I want to use my computer!

If you have MCS you cannot be too careful.
I have a reasonable amount of hope that I can eventually use this desk safely. I think I might go buy some vodka and clean both the desk and the shelf with it. The non-chlorine bleach definitely helped, but vodka can annihilate certain chemical smells.

(Before buying the shelf that is now behind that file cabinet.)

Book Reveiw: Tox-Sick by Suzanne Somers

Several months ago my parents showed up at my place of work and handed me a book: Tox-Sick by Suzanne Somers. Yes, the author is the creator of the Thigh Master and was on Three's Company. She has become one of my favorite celebrities because of her work on educating the public about mold toxicity, multiple chemical sensitives and environmental illness, poor thyroid health, and the importance of eating organic.

It took me months to read this book. Between the brain fog, fatigue, inflammation, and generally feeling unwell, I've been finding it very difficult to read at all over the past couple of years. I read this book faster than any others since I've become sick. It was very engaging for a book on health, and my brain was hungry to learn more about how to heal. I read a couple of chapters about 3 times before I understood what they said, but it was worth struggling through processing the words. Understanding this, I hope you forgive me if I forget something or misrepresent something in this review.

I highly recommend that everyone reads this book, even if you're not sick. It will open your eyes to how you can protect not only your health, but the health of those around you. If you care about and respect humans, you'll want to read this book. It's certainly not the only book with this type of information, but it might be the easiest to read and understand. The entire message of the book boils down to the dangers of environmental toxicity common in our every day lives, how toxins are the root cause of most chronic illnesses (even affecting genes that cause illness), and how to protect yourself in this toxic world we've created. It sounds like a conspiracy theory until you read about the actual science behind it - there's actually quite a bit of research, much of which even the CDC and WHO acknowledge.

As I first started reading I was a bit worried it wouldn't be anything new, other than her personal stories of mold and toxin exposure causing her cancer and bloating. She spends many many pages slowly prepping the reader for what's to come later in the book, gently asking you health questions and lifestyle questions to motivate you to want to change your habits in order to become healthier. Because so much of this long introduction wasn't new to me since I've already been living in an environmental health nightmare, I ended up skimming over the rest of it.

What was helpful to me in this introduction was her granddaughter's story. Her 14-year-old granddaughter went to a clinic in Florida that I had been curious about. I quickly found out that only celebrities can afford the clinic, but the way they treat patients is something I hope other clinics can learn from. Her granddaughter's story was heartbreaking, but she was able to recover because of this clinic.

The majority of the book is long interviews with doctors. She interviews Nick Gonzalez, M.D. (may he RIP); Sherry Rogers, M.D.; Stephen Sinatra, M.D.; Gary Gorden, M.D.; Ritchie Shoemaker, M.D.; and Walter Crinnion, N.D. While the topic of each interview might not be new to people with environmental illness, many of the details were. I learned quite a bit from each of these doctors, even though I've read up on some of them before reading this book. Each of these doctors explains some root causes they've found in patients as well as offering advice for recovery. I'll include a photo of a page from most of the interviews, so you can get a taste of what the doctors have to offer in these interviews.

Dr. Nick Gonzalez's interview made me want to see him as a patient, but sadly, he's one of the over 50 holistic doctors that have been murdered in the past year (you can read more about this on the link in the last paragraph.) As a cancer doctor, he talked quite a bit about organ health. He digs into gut health, especially the role of bacteria in fighting and preventing cancer. He explains how environmental toxins, especially mercury, messes with our gut bacteria and stem cells that we need to sustain our life, which promotes the growth of cancer cells. He digs into the concept of "leaky brain," which is an issue of a compromised blood-brain barrier. His suggestions for healing are mostly focused on liver cleanses, and so he's a big fan of bentonite clay and coffee enemas. I was a bit skeptical of these suggestions at first, mainly due to assumptions about lead in the clay and coffee enemas being harsh on the colon, but it inspired me to do further reading on the subject. I'm much less skeptical the more I read up on these treatments, but I think that's for another post.



After his interview she digs into the rising issue of gluten sensitivities, borrowing research from some of the leaders such as Dr. Perlmutter (author of Grain Brain.)

This leads into an interview with Dr. Sherry Rogers on Environmental Illness. Her back story is very interesting. She went into Environmental Heath after formaldehyde poisoning from working on cadavers in medical school. She later was told that as a 35-year-old her bones looked like those of a 78-year-old's. She found out that the only way to manage her chronic pain was to eliminate all nightshades from her diet, even the spices like paprika. She had been through a lot, and it lead her to writing the book Detoxify or Die, which I'm interested in reading. She digs into Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, thyroid lab tests showing normal results when the thyroid is sick, nutrition problems such as with magnesium, and more.


Next, she moves into a chapter on the heart. This is the chapter that many people are going to feel most resistant to because it gives advice that's opposite of what our government's nutritional advice says. She digs into the necessity of eating saturated fats and the role of cholesterol. But don't just take her word for it or the word of the research she borrows from, read her interview with Cardiologist and Psychotherapist Dr. Stephen Sinatra. He explains how the low-fat craze all started when President Eisenhower had a heart attack. Ansel Keys conducted his Seven Countries Study and found that people who consumed the lowest amount of fat and the least heart disease, and that Eisnenhower ate a high fat diet. Dr. Sinatra then explains that Ansel Keys cherry picked his data to draw this conclusion, not being fully honest in the study, in order to prove his hypothesis. George McGovern was the secretary of health at the time and decided to set into motion the low-fat craze across the nation, based solely on Ansel Key's "research." This is when margarine was invented and "heart healthy" oils like corn oils took over the market. Then the Framingham study came out, showing correlation between high cholesterol and cardiovascular events. The correlation caused a mass assumption that cholesterol was a risk factor in heart disease. Dr. Sinatra then explains that this is when drug companies first started making statins to lower cholesterol. Dr. Sinatra was a spokesperson for statins, being paid very very well to promote their use. He said after a few years of promoting them, he started to see problems.

"Well, after a few years, we were realizing that something was wrong; we made all these changes to our diets, yet the incidence of heart disease was skyrocketing... Because of the food. Corn oil, margarine, and all the other new foods that were trans fats; we had not realized that these fake foods and poor quality oils were dangerous. What an irony; we gave up butter and steaks and got sicker and fatter! Then I had an epiphany relative to statins; I realized I was barking up the wrong tree. It was in 1993 when I read an article showing that statin drugs diminished CoQ10, which is a vital nutrient made in every cell in the body and is a major nutrient for the production of cellular energy. Also CoQ10 is critically important for the strong pumping action of the heart. I had started using CoQ10 with my patients a decade before, in the early 80's, and was very impressed; I was able to avert a heart transplant with a patient I put on CoQ10. So I had to ask myself this question: How can a statin drug that's supposed to be so good for the heart deplete it of CoQ10, the most vital nutrient for the heart to survive? It didn't make sense! Then I discovered that Merck Pharmaceuticals had a patent on CoQ10 in the same pill called Lovastatin or Mevacor, meaning they knew that statins would deplete the heart of CoQ10 but kept it hidden from the public. So I had to wonder, if Merck knows about this situation, why don't they exercise the patient? ...Probably because the drugs were selling so well, and the doctors had been convinced to believe they were so safe. ...Why alert people to a problem when the drug is the darling of the industry? ...Statin drugs are some of the top selling drugs in the world."

He then goes into much more detail on how to naturally treat heart disease and how fat is actually necessary to keep the heart healthy. VERY eye-opening interview!

Next, Suzanne explores the thyroid, digging into hormone replacement drugs too. This prompts an interview with Dr. Garry Gordon, a functional medicine doctor recognized for his expertise in chelation therapy and antiaging medicine. This interview, for me, was the weakest of them all because I've already done so much research into synthetic chemicals that are endocrine dispruptors (act like hormones in the body.) This is a fantastic interview for people who have not read up on this subject.


She then moves onto Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker. If you have been diagnosed with mold toxicity, I would be surprised if you haven't heard his name. He is behind the Shoemaker Protocol, and he is the world's leading researcher on mold toxicity. This interview made me angry, but more than anything it made me feel overwhelmed. The amount of energy and MONEY it takes to do follow his protocol is beyond what I can afford. Even if I had the money, how could I possibly do all the the work? What's going to prevent me from getting mold toxic all over again, when I'd then have to redo the entire program? Even though this interview left me feeling scared due to the reality check, I think it's one of the most important chapters in the entire book. Mold is a reality that every person faces today, and mold is not the same problem it was even 50 years ago. This is the first thing he says in the interview:

"Thank you, Suzanne. Well, that's a series of questions. The Leviticus discussion about indoor mold is one that people always will talk about, but we know that there were some rather dramatic changes in fungi (mold) beginning early in the '70's. The Pittsburgh Paint Company started adding a fungicide to paint so that it was easier to clean and therefore easier to maintain. The particular compound created mutations in fungi, and just about all the players that make people ill indoors now come out of this mutated line. The toxic compounds made by these mutated fungi I worry about having a different shape compared to the same compounds made my earlier generations of fungi. Our immune systems recognize this compound as foreign and create a much greater immune response to them than they did in the unmutatd form. So the simplest answer is no, the fungi we had then are not the same as they are now."

This interview is dense - very dense. He goes onto explain that 25% of the population have certain HLA genes that cause those people (of which I am one) to have a harder time detoxing from mold. He digs into how so many chronic illnesses are diagnosed as other diseases, like Parkinson's, but are actually caused by mold. There's so much information here that I can't possibly cover it well enough in this review. If nothing else, go to the library, find this book, and read this chapter.

Finally, she interviews Walter Crinnion, N.D. This interview focuses on how to clean up your home environment in order to heal. I read this chapter last night and I honestly can't remember enough of it, except that he's the scientific researcher for a certain enzyme brand that we sell at the store I work at. What really stood out to me in this interview is how he advocates colonic irrigations. Colinics have been my favorite therapy of all because they give me immediate relief and help my MCS more than anything else. I'm less reactive after a few colonics, until I accumulate more toxins in my colon. He really digs into the effect of toxins on gut health, the methodology of Natuopathy vs Western trained doctors, and how toxins affect the immune system. He explains the role of air purifiers, such as which types are worth it and which ones are not. He made a strong case against carpets:


The last pages of her book focuses on supplements she personally recommends, an appendix, bibliography and citations, and index. I skimmed over most of this since my doctor already has me on the supplements that are working for me, and I was very tired at that point.

I strongly encourage you to buy this book and read it. STRONGLY. There are some fantastic books out there that explain this information in better detail, but this book is so easy to digest and understand. It's so easy to share information from it with family members and friends. It's not daunting, and it's so packed with lots of valuable information.

Overall this book left me feeling depressed about the state of our world. What have we done to our world? It's horrifying! It feels like a 50's sci-fi movie in which humanity slowly dies off from a chemical invasion, except that it's actually happening. We're allowing it to happen. In fact, so many of us have bought into the idea that we're better off and healthier because of all the synthetics in our world today! Follow the money trail, and you'll find nothing but greed, not respect for humanity.

The book is also so important because it gives us this reality check. We need to understand the assault on human health so that we can protect ourselves from it. We need to learn the tools to recover our health, which is very hard to do when our environments are so poisonous. It all sounds like a conspiracy theory until you fall sick to chronic illness and no MD can treat you. I'm just one of too many people suffering poor health due to toxicity.

Have you read it? Please share your thoughts below!

Source of Mold - My Reaction

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while. I have two draft posts that I'm struggling to finish. I'm not well. I'm actually really struggling a lot. In a way I think I'm too overwhelmed to really write about health issues. What's going on? Mold.

We're having the siding on our house replaced. It had some visible damage and probable water damage, so it was time. The damage was so much worse than we anticipated! Let me just show you in pictures:


(Blogger issue: this image is saved in the correct orientation, but always uploads upside down, and I can't rotate the image on Blogger... sigh.)














I promise you: these problems were not obvious before the siding was removed!

There were a couple of problems: no Tyvek under the siding, and some of the flashing was installed incorrectly, letting water pour behind it and along the plywood on the house. The deck area is another issue - it was installed poorly. It wasn't even anchored to the house, it was only nailed to the house. There was no flashing installed on the deck, so water sat between the siding and the deck and rotted away the siding, leaving black mold and white mold. The back door that goes out onto the deck sticks out from the house, and the bottom of the door area that sticks out just had foil. FOIL. Water was sitting on the foil, soaking into the plywood, and mold was everywhere. Thankfully, the crew we hired is drying out soaked areas, replacing as much Buffalo Board as needed, taking off the rot from the frame of the house, and killing the mold. They're doing a good job!

When my parents bought this house about 10 years ago they did have inspections done. None of this was caught.

We're having the siding company install Tyvek under the new siding. This is one use of plastic I can support! If the house had Tyvek installed in the first place (and installed the flashing correctly) we might not have any of this mold damage.

Yes, these couple of weeks have been ROUGH. Oh the inflammation, aches, brain fog, severe fatigue, painful stomach cramps and bloating, skin rashes, and eye pain! The eye pain!!! The scary part is that I've basically lost my sense of smell. I can hardly even detect smells that should alert me to toxicity in the air, which I'm using hyper alert to.

Why am I living in this house while all this mold is getting kicked up? First and foremost, I didn't think it would get into the house since it's all on the outside of the house. That ended up being not true. They found evidence that mold was getting into the house through electrical outlets. The vapor barrier on the backside of the drywall was not sealed around the electrical outlets around the entire house, so any mold sitting in the frame of the house or the insulation got behind the vapor barrier a bit around the outlet boxes, and then into the house. Scary. So all that mold is being kicked up as they've been sealing up the vapor barrier around the outlets. The other reason is that I don't have anywhere else to go that's safe for me. I'd be no better off staying with other people I know, as the use scented things, Lysol, chlorine, etc.

I'll write a lot more later, because there's much to be said, but I'm hurting too much. My fingers are even throbbing a bit in the joints.

Oh, and in case you live in my area and need house repairs done, we're using Fettig Millwork and Windows. He and his crew are doing a fantastic job!

Mycotoxins and Mold

My naturopathic doctor recently had me do a mycotoxin test through BiotrekLabs.com. The reason for this is because the lab gave him a test for free, and I got to be the guinea pig and try the test out. If the test was not free, I highly doubt I would have had a mycotoxin test done. As it turns out the test showed I have "alarmingly" high levels of all mycotoxins in my body:



I was given my actual numbers over the phone, and I can tell you they up to 3x higher than the top of the range. This is alarming - I was really surprised. Many thoughts ran through my head: Why isn't the mold killing me? Since aflatoxin is one of the most carcinogenic toxins known to man, why don't I have cancer when my body is full of it? Why am I not suffering a daily bloody nose, which is my typical allergic reaction to mold (I tested very high in allergies to most molds many years ago.) Wouldn't my symptoms be A LOT worse than this? Sure, I can hardly move some days, but I'd expect to be completely bed ridden with results like these!

Let's back up a little bit. The company who makes the test is not the most reputable, and accuracy is a concern here. For a $650 test I would expect highly reliable results. These results could be very accurate, but there's reason to question it. That said, it's no surprise that mold is a major player in my illness, and I do believe I am high in the mycotoxins for several reasons.

I've had some awful mold exposures in my life. I've always been so sensitive that coming into contact with mold would give me an immediate bloody nose with mild flu-like symptoms, while people around me were just fine. I lived on the coast in Oregon for my teenage years, a place that was naturally moldy due to constant high humidity. I could never visit the city of Bend, Oregon without getting very sick. Every single time I stayed the night in Bend, which was at least once a summer, I would end up with the flu after several bloody noses. I think a big part of the problem was that I am also allergic to trees that grow in that area, so it was a double whammy. When we moved to North Dakota from Oregon, we lived in a guest house for 3 months that was not in good condition. My mom and I disrupted a big bush of black mold on a sliding glass door in that house (I call it a bush because it was at least a few inches by a few inches.) Next thing I knew, both nostrils were pouring blood and blood was flowing down my throat. Mom grabbed a mixing bowl to collect all my blood and I filled it at least half full. I wanted to go to the ER, and I was sick with flu like symptoms after that exposure. Years later my husband and I moved into an old house in Boise, Idaho. At first it was hard to tell if there was mold or not - it was old, needed repair work done, but nothing obvious as far as mold. I was getting bloody noses at least weekly, but I tend to get them in Boise anyway due to the dry air. It was in that house that I started gaining weight rapidly, developed arthritis, started to rely on coffee and energy drinks, and felt my physical decline. One day the wall of the shower fell into the tub, revealing lots of mildew. I was very stupid at the time, assuming it was just mildew and as long as the lining of the shower got resealed onto the wall it wouldn't affect us. We lived in that house for 2 years. We moved back to North Dakota into my parent's house (my parents moved out as we moved in.) The skylight in the main bathroom was occasionally leaking, thankfully into the toilet itself, ha! One day it wasn't just a drip, it was an actual stream of water and a larger hole opened up in the ceiling. The repairman said he couldn't find any mold, but when we replaced the skylight we found that the roof board below the skylight was heavily rotted. The bathroom was renovated and sealed up, and the roof was repaired. Shortly after that, we had our windows replaced, and mold was found in the window frames. Thankfully, replacing the windows took care of the mold!

(The mold test kit's results for the main bathroom when the skylight was leaking into our toilet.)

I have a history with mold, as you can read. The question today is this: Am I still living in a moldy environment? My dad hired a company to test our house for mold. The results showed that the upstairs, where my husband and I live, had half the amount of mold as the outside of our house had (which is the base range.) The downstairs, where another family member lives, had double the mold as outside of our house. They called it "slightly elevated." For me personally, "slightly elevated" can mean "not at all safe."

Another clue as my biotoxin illness was taking the VCS Test (Visual Contract Sensitivity Test.) The idea with this test is that mycotoxins build up in our eyes, making it difficult to see contrasting colors. It seems very simplistic, and I'm not going to explain it well, so I encourage you to read about on this site. Dr. Richie Shoemaker (the leader in mold illnesses) highly recommends the test. I tested positive for biotoxins based on this test (the test was free):


We had a new washer and dryer installed this week, and when the guys from Best Buy removed the old washer we saw a couple issues. The backside of the washer looked mildewy, something I couldn't have seen before. The valve for cold water was corroded and leaking, something I couldn't have seen before. They were unable to install our washer because of that valve, so they shut it off so it stopped dripping, at least. We have no way of knowing if it was dripping behind the sheet rock, but it's very possible. But that's when it dawned on me: was I washing my clothes in a moldy washing machine? It was about 30 years old, had a leak, and probably wasn't cleaned properly for years. Are ALL of my clothes contaminated with mold from that machine?

So... knowing my history, you can see why it's no surprise that mold is an issue in my health.

Normal people who get sick from mold tend to get over it and regain their health after leaving the moldy environment. This is probably the least moldy environment I've been in for most of my life. You'd think that I should be improving, but my level was still very high on that test! It was that high after 2 1/2 years of a perfect anti-candida diet (no sugar, no moldy foods, nothing to feed mold), and a 6 month long Candida cleanse (which should have killed mold too.) Either my levels were even higher and they have come down with all this work, or what I'm doing isn't working and isn't killing the mold in my body. (Or the test isn't accurate, but I don't think that's a big factor.)

When I've looked into why my body doesn't recover from mold, I keep seeing research and articles talking about the HLA genes. Apparently, only 25% of the population have these genes, and those that do are highly prone to mycotoxin illness. I've been told that the gene makes it so the body recycles mold back into the body instead of excreting it out like in normal people. I have the genes. *IF* this is true, then how can I possible fight it? I could be recycling mold from when I was a little kid, right? So what hope do I possibly have? If I do mange to kill all the mold in my body, wouldn't I just get sick all over again from new mold accumulation in my body? Mold is impossible to escape!

So I looked at mold treatment options. The first thing that came to my attention is Ozone therapy. Apparently ozone IVs can cause mold in the body to implode, killing the biofilm and the mold itself. It's impossible for mold to survive in ozone. Sounds like a miracle cure that's easy, right? Nope! Ozone is HIGHLY toxic to humans. It's so risky that it's actually illegal, but there are doctors administering it. Strong people can survive ozone IVs, but someone like me? It's extremely risky. You will find many doctors who swear by ozone and its safety, but I am very cautious. Alternatively, I get treatments in a hyperbaric chamber at my Naturopathic Doctor's clinic. This chamber is oxygen therapy, which can do the same thing as ozone, only much much much more safely. The problem is that I don't live near my doctor's clinic, and I'm unable to get treatments more than a few times a year. I have yet to find a hyperbaric chamber anywhere in the city I live in. I've been told to drink food grade 35% hydrogen peroxide, which is essentially the same thing as ozone, but supposedly more gentle. This is not something I'm willing to try without my doctor's support, especially based on what 3% hydrogen peroxide did to my mouth (check out my black hairy tongue post.)

The next option that was made aware of is the Shoemaker Protocol. I had several people tell me it's the ONLY option for treating mold, and all the mold support groups I've looked into treat this protocol like the Holy Bible of mold toxicity. It's so popular you'd think it has a high success rate, but I keep digging and digging through the internet and can't actually find much about the success rate, just people claiming to feel better and people claiming they can't tolerate the protocol. The protocol seems to be a mixed bag. From what I'm reading, there are plenty of people who do not do well on this protocol specifically because of the main prescription medication: Cholestyramine (CSM). It's a cholesterol drug. This raises red flags for me. First and foremost, my cholesterol should not be lowered! Secondly, I don't tolerate medication well - my body readily rejects most medications I've tried. Thirdly, negative reviews of this drug for mold toxicity are very negative. It causes severe constipation, and you must take it with a laxative, causing a great deal of distress for many patients. It also absorbs nutrition from your food and supplements, so you must be really careful about how to take the drug so that you don't malnourish and dehydrate yourself. I hope you can understand my hesitancy to consider this protocol! I understand that when it works for someone it works very well in that it makes them feel better. But what I don't understand is why this prescription drug could possibly be more effective than natural binders like Zeolite, Activated Charcoal, or clay?  Dr. Shoemaker claims that they don't bind to the same toxins, but why not? I plan to do a lot more reading up on this protocol since it's pushed so hard by mold patients, but I think I need to remain skeptical. Listen to or read this really wonderful interview on this protocol by Dr. Shoemaker himself.

The other option I was made aware of is a protocol by Dr. Nick Gonzalez, may he R.I.P., as outlined in Suzanne Sommer's book Tox-Sick. (I will write a separate post on this book once I finish reading it, but so far I highly recommend it.) He advocates for regular coffee enemas and far infrared sauna treatments in addition to taking food-grade bentonite clay daily. He claims that the clay's magnetic charge and honeycomb structure makes it an excellent binder to absorb mold and carry it out of the body. I'm intrigued by this, especially since I know how much better I feel when I take activated charcoal regularly. I also found this study about the effectiveness of clay on aflatoxins in humans. I see problems with this plan, though: dehydration and heavy metal toxicity. Apparently there is less lead in the clay than in some nuts and vegetables, and apparently it's not a bioavailable lead. I'm linking to Wellness Mama on this one simply because I'm having a very difficult time finding actual studies on the risks of the heavy metals in clay - even the FDA approves bentonite clay as a safe food additive. Maybe my hesitation about food grade clay isn't well founded afterall? I have been using bentonite clay on my skin and as a toothpaste for a couple of years now and absolutely love it. As for the coffee enemas, I'm interesting in trying. I get colonic irrigations a few times a year at my doctor's clinic and they are exceptionally helpful! Enemas won't be nearly as good, but I'm curious because I can do them at home. I already use my far infrared sauna many times a week at home (I haven't written a post on this - what's wrong with me!?)

I'm glad my naturopathic doctor had another option for me. He put me on a homeopathic nasal spray with oils designed to kill mold in my sinuses. This is not a full solution, but we just want to see what happens. Mold loves the sinuses because they're a dark humid place, so starting by killing the mold in my sinuses makes sense. The spray is also designed to desensitize me to mold homeopathically.  It's a bit intimidating spraying trace amounts of black mold into my sinuses, but I'm not foreign to the concept and have had good results with this type of treatment in the past. For now, I'm content to address my mold issue with this nasal spray while I work on making my house as mold-free as possible. Ideally I'd be able to do a hyperbaric chamber regularly too, but at least I can stick with my diet and my sauna to continue to kill off and sweat out the mold in my body. I might even consider the food grade bentonite clay, after a lot more research and talking about it with my doctor. I need to go slowly, and I like that this is a very gentle start to killing off the mold in my body.

"You're Not You" Movie Review

We watched "You're Not You" on Netflix last night, a movie about a pianist (Hilary Swank) with ALS and her slow descent into death. We were drawn to it because my husband is a professional pianist and I've been suffering chronic illnesses. When you boil the movie down, it's basically another Million Dollar Baby, but only half as powerful and meaningful. It wasn't a bad movie, but it could have been so much better. A few things irritated me, and these things are a great reflection of the problems with how healthy people view chronically ill people:

1. The movie jumped right into the main character starting to get sick. We never got to know her as the person she is, we only learned about her as a sick person. For a movie titled "You're Not You" I don't know who the "You" actually ever was. This irritates me because it's so easy to forget who a sick person is. What are their dreams and passions? How did they spend their time? How did they treat people? What was their social life like? Were they independent, codependent, respected, admired...? I don't know! I knew next to nothing about the character of the main character except that she was a pianist married to a super wealthy lawyer. She was meant to just be viewed as "the sick character." I wanted to know who this poor woman was, and what kind of loss it was to the world when she died. It angered me because I don't want to be viewed that way, as "the sick person," and I feel the movie trained the audience to have pity on sick people instead of respecting who they are as people. I am a person who happens to have an illness, I am not a sickness.

2. I was angry at the main character for not allowing people to love her. Her greatest character trait was pushing people out of her life so they didn't have to be ruined by her illness too. We saw the effects of her pushing out her husband first, then her caretaker later. The problem was, these people had purpose in caring for her. They were better people because of her. She refused to recognize that, and instead wanted them to leave her so they could live their lives without being dragged down by her suffering. She didn't value her life or her ability to contribute to the world, even with an illness. This character was just an illness, hardly a person. The movie did do a wonderful job showing the pain and torment that the second main character, her caretaker, went through when she was pushed away, or "fired."

3. This wasn't a story about the value of life. It was a story about surrendering to an illness and wanting to die. It was about being physically alive, but having already given up on living. I firmly believe that all life has value, even the life of people suffering with serious illness who have no hope of survival. I understand, and can sympathize with choosing not to have medical treatments in order to die a little sooner and have less suffering. But she didn't even try to live with what life she had left - well, she did for a few short scenes, but she went right back to feeling like it was wrong of her to enjoy herself. The movie really needed to show the value of the life she still had in her more so than just showing how heartbroken her caretaker was.


I'm just sad that this movie had the opportunity to teach people empathy for for the chronically ill, but it really just left me with the impression that chronically ill people have too little value left and should be allowed to die. That they still deserve love, but very few people are willing to give it.

The one major point that I really appreciated and connected with was that the main character didn't want a trained nurse as a caretaker. She ended up hiring a disorganized mess of a young woman to be her caretaker, despite not knowing anything about chronic illnesses or nursing. She did this against her husband's wishes because she knew that this girl would actually listen to her. She wasn't a trained nurse, therefore she could be trained to the main character's specific needs. She didn't want to work with a new doctor or take experimental drugs, because they just give false hope without actually listening to her needs or desires. This really resonated with me because I've also grown so angry with health care professionals who think that their training is more important than listening to and adapting to the patient. My naturopathic doctor is incredible in that he meets me  on my level, gets to know me, lets me tell me every little detail that's wrong, and fully considers the implications of everything I complain about. He quells my worries and gives me real hope - not false positivity. He uses his training to treat me, but he adapts it to me, specifically. The main character found this same trait her in young caretaker, so she held on to her. 

Please, just remember that the chronically ill are PEOPLE. Human beings with a heart and soul, dreams and goal, and plenty of love and life to give despite their limitations!