Podcast Transcript
Fall in Love with Fitness
Mon, Oct 24, 2022 10:38AM • 45:04
Summary from the host
Jason Earle is an adoring father, an incurable entrepreneur, and is the founder & CEO of GOT MOLD? and MycoLab USA.
Allergic to nearly everything in his environment as a child, Jason’s asthma was so severe that he was initially diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
Since discovering the source of his problems, Jason has spent the last 20 years performing countless sick building investigations, solving many medical mysteries along the way, and helping thousands of families recover their health and peace of mind by discovering and treating mold problems.
He has been featured or appeared on Good Morning America, Extreme Makeover: Home Editions, The Dr. Oz Show, Entrepreneur, Wired, at least two college textbooks, and more.
In this week’s episode of the Fall In Love with Fitness Podcast, Jason shares the difference between having mold and having a mold problem, why he started his mold company, and what he believes our purpose in the world is.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mold, people, problem, mycotoxins, jason, symptoms, called, breathing, remediation, issue, mold spores, mold inspection, exposure, life, asthma, indoors, moldy, created, allergies, means
00:09
If you’re tired of dieting and stepping on the scale, you’re lacking energy and confidence and you’re ready to harness your inner athlete, then you’re in the right place. I’m Sherry Shabad. And in each episode, I’ll help you to rebuild your fitness identity and empower your deepest transformation. So that health and fitness are not just what you do, but who you are.
00:36
What’s up athletes Welcome back to the show. Do you know the difference between having mold in the house and having a mold problem in the house? And would you know what the signs and symptoms are of having a mold problem or how it could impact your respiratory system or even your ability to release wait. Jason Earle is a man on a mission and he’s an adoring father, incurable entrepreneur and indoor air quality Crusader. He is the founder and CEO of one 800 Got mold and the creator of the got Mold Test Kit. When he was growing up, Jason was allergic to nearly everything in his environment. And as a child, Jason’s asthma was so severe that he was initially diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, absenteeism due to battle with Lyme disease, and his mother’s suicide ultimately led him to drop out at 16 and get a full time job at the local gas station. Now, this is where most stories end, but in an almost miraculous turn of events from a chance meeting in mere months, Jason found himself working on Wall Street, and within a year he was unwittingly becoming the youngest licensed stockbroker in history at age 17. This resulted in a Guinness World Record, and he went on to enjoy a nine year career. Now, you may want to wonder why Jason went from Wall Street Wizkid to America’s top mold detective, and how he connected the dots in his own health Odyssey implicating the moldy farmhouse he grew up and we’re going to learn all about that on this episode of fall in love with fitness. Over the last 20 years, Jason has performed countless sick building investigations, solved many medical mysteries along the way, and helped 1000s of families recover their health and peace of mind. Jason has been featured on the Good Morning America show extreme makeover, home additions, the Dr. Oz Show, entrepreneur, wired and at least two college textbooks. Athletes, I’m so excited to get into this, this is a really important topic. And I learned so much in my conversation with Jason. Before we dive in, I want to remind you that I have a free download for you at fall in love with fitness.com. It’s a meal plan that starts off in a structure that is extremely flexible and adaptable to each person. Now it’s not a diet, but it’s a way to get started and slowly adapt the way you eat. Now let’s get into it.
03:08
Hi, Jason, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
03:12
Hi Sherry
03:13
it’s so good to be here. Thanks for having me.
03:16
So you went from a Wall Street whiz, I believe you were in the Guinness World Record to becoming the mold guy. So how did this happen?
03:26
Well, first of all, some would say that’s a fall from grace, by some measures, right. In fact, when I, when I first made the move into, into the Healthy Home Business, one of the first things that we did was got a mold sniffing dog. So I went from youngest broken history to guy with a mold semi dog, my family even thought I’d lost my mind. So but you know, within months, they saw what we were what we were looking at here, and it’s been it’s been truly transformative. So, my, my, my path, like many people in this space, in the healthy home space, are the byproduct of an experience that no one would wish upon themselves or anyone else. But like many people who overcome something, I believe they develop a sense of purpose from that oftentimes, and many people who, who experienced that then find tremendous value in helping to prevent suffering and further suffering and others. And so you know, I think I think one of the things that we all even with our kids, right, I know your audience probably has, has a fair share of of their own. We want to protect our kids from adversity, but boy, the adversities that I’ve experienced in my life gave me all the gifts, right so so, you know, I got into the mold business because of an awareness that occurred to me after I had been on Wall Street for nine years. I started when I was 16 and left when I was 25. And, and I had been backpacking around looking for meaning really I, I, I was in Hawaii who was I discarded My, my, my suits and ties for the sake of of pursuing basically what was a quiet voice. And so I made my mom who actually died or on hand suicide when I was 14 was very service oriented. Now, in fact, people who know her and loved her would say that she was service oriented to a fault, in fact, probably was one of the underlying causes of her own demise. But but she still embedded in me a sense of contribution to the greater good. And so Wall Street never scratched that itch. You know, the people who benefited from my success were the people who own the stores where I shopped, that’s about it. And so that always bothered me. And it led to, you know, to substance abuse issues, and what ultimately became, you know, a healthy case of, of alcoholism later on in my life, which, thankfully, I’m now four years sober. But the bottom line is that I went traveling, really in pursuit of that, that, that, that source of meaning. And while I was away, I read a story about a guy who had gotten sick from the building where he was an employee, it was actually the Hilton kuliah tower on Oahu, in Waikiki Beach. And he at 40 years old, developed adult onset asthma, which I had never heard of before. And set me had allergies and sensitivities, all these things that he had never had a problem with before. And for me, it was like a deja vu moment because rewind all the way back, when I was about four years old, I suddenly lost a lot of weight and a three week period, and I developed, I was having difficulty breathing. And my parents took me to the pediatrician. And he said, You should take him to the hospital. And they took me to Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia, which is renowned respiratory clinic. And, and they initially diagnosed me with cystic fibrosis because of my family history, and also this the symptoms that I was presenting. And my dad, it really hit my father squarely because he lost four of his cousins to CF before the age of 14. So it was it was something that was a concern of theirs. Before they even had me that was an only child. So they spent the next six weeks crying while while they waited the next appointment for a second opinion, which fortunately was was good news. evidenced by the fact that I sit here 45, almost 46 years old.
07:31
You know, that CF diagnosis was a death sentence back then. And, and so so, but they tested me for allergies. And this is one of my first first action with the diagnosis was asthma compounded by pneumonia. And they tested me for allergies, which involved a rather medieval process of putting like a straight jacket for toddlers, pap posts with your back expose and there’s a grin on your back and a skin test tube with all these allergens and I apparently tested positive for every single thing that they tested before. And my dad said it looked like a ladybug. Big swollen back. That’s what’s fun. And so I lived on inhalers until I was about 12 and and really spent most of my time outdoors I guess intuitively knew that there’s something in the building even though I had reactions to things outside but I was I tested positive for you know, I was allergic to grass we corn eggs dogs, cats, cotton soybeans, so like clothing was was was itchy. You know, I grew up in a nonworking farms surrounded by grass wheat, corn, eggs, dogs, tats, soybean fields everywhere around the cornfields everywhere. So I was a Washington stuff. And when we moved out, all my symptoms went away. And I never thought about it again, except for the fact my grandpa stayed dismissed my my allergies and asthma going away because my grandfather had run out is also around puberty. And so, so I hadn’t thought about it again, until I was sitting there in Hawaii. You know, it came full circle for me. And suddenly it was in that moment that I knew that that’s where I wanted to spend time and energy. Because I became curious about I will actually when I first called my father from a payphone and said, Hey, do you think we had a mold problem that will front road and he laughed that he said, he said, Jason, we had mushrooms growing in the basement? Of course, we had more. Why do you ask and it was just so kind of flippant about it. Because back then they didn’t think about that stuff. There was no awareness about mold. In fact, they smoked indoors, even in the car with the windows closed. So it was in that moment that I immediately became fascinated with how buildings impact our health because I knew for sure that my respiratory issues were if not completely caused by the mold at least exacerbated. And so that led me on a quest to to where we are today.
09:48
That’s incredible. Yeah, I don’t think anything really is by accident, right? I mean, we have to go through these struggles in life to really find almost our purpose and and so you you essentially told ask people how to find or pick up the signs between a mold problem and just having mold. Right. So what would what would be the difference between the two? Because I think a lot of us don’t really realize that this this could exist, especially when you know, we get our houses inspected, we move into the house, we don’t realize there’s there’s a mold problem. And to your point it gets sort of swept under the rug, it’s it’s allergies, or it’s asthma or it’s cystic fibrosis, right. So what would be the difference? And how do you know that you have an actual mold problem?
10:30
Well, so a mold problem is a moisture problem. And so I like to just get right to root causes on things. people mistakenly think the mole is the problem is if mold just happens, like a like a lightning strike, or like an earthquake, it is it is not a random event that happens it is a very predictable, byproduct of extended dampness. And so what that means is that when something gets wet, and stays wet, for more than 48 hours, so the EPA guidelines are 24 to 48 hours, something gets wet, something pours and absorptive. So let me get something clear mold eats stuff that was at one time living, or that’s made of stuff that was at one time living so so mold is doing its job, its job is to be the great recycler is to turn stuff back into dirt, it’s doing its job of doing that too late leaves and twigs in your yard. It’s not so good if it’s doing that to your sheetrock, or your carpet or your carpet padding or your personal belongings. But it requires the same same factors in order for it to grow. Primarily, it needs a nutrition source, because we all like to eat, nature likes to eat, mold is no exception. Also a comfortable temperature, there are certain temperature ranges, which happen to be the same ones we like. So mold really kind of partners up with us. In that also oxygen is it is aerobic in nature. But it’s also the most important thing if it needs water. And of all the things that we can control in our in our environment, we can’t control the nutrition because we make stuff out of stuff that mold like eat, we make homes out of mold friendly materials, which is a problem. But it’s not something anyone else can sell any of us can sell. And but we can control the moisture. And so and it’s when we don’t, that it starts to pop up. So So when stuff that can’t that’s porcelain absorptive gets wet and stays wet for more than 24 to 48 hours, it’s at risk of getting moldy. According to the industry standard. If it stays wet for 72 hours, it should be treated as mold, which means disposed of whether there’s visible mold or not. Now, let me make a distinction. mold spores are everywhere. Okay. mold itself is you Bic witness, meaning it is literally everywhere there are mold spores in the air, you’re breathing. And even if you’re having no problems whatsoever, you’re breathing in 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s in some cases, hundreds of 1000s of spores of various different types of fungi amongst many other particles and gases all the time without any ill effect. So why is it that some spores cause problems and others? Okay, that’s that the issue is not when you have mold spores in your environment. But rather when you’ve got first of all mold growth, which is means that you’ve got, you’ve got a moisture, mold spores, reproduction, and then all the chemistry that’s produced from that. So when molds growing, it’s producing more spores. And so high concentrations of spores indoors can cause allergic reactions and, and cause other problems for people that are sensitive. But but also when mold grows, it produces the musty odor. And that musty odor has been long thought to be sort of an aesthetic nuisance. But in truth, it’s actually got very significant health effects. And it’s emerging. Now there’s a lot of research being directed to this area that shows that babies exposed to the musty odor have a 250% increase in chance of developing asthma later in life. The second leading cause of of childhood asthma actually behind maternal smoking. And so there’s many other correlations, including depression, believe it or not, and some interesting animal studies that have shown that that exposure to theatre in certain animals creates all sorts of neurological issues and reproductive issues and hormonal disruptions and mitochondrial issues. So the musty smell is not just hey, your basement is a basement smell. It’s much more serious. And then the third thing that mold produces when it’s growing is mycotoxins, which a lot of people talk about and most people think of the root of illness, but it’s actually not because dampness all mold growth indoors is unacceptable to any significance. And so that’s the distinction between having mold in your house, which is mold spores, which are ubiquitous and you cannot get rid of them versus having a mold problem, which is where you’ve had growth occurring, either intermittent or chronic. It could be even a one time event where you’ve got a significant concentration and The most important thing that you want to look for is, of course, is symptoms. If anybody is experiencing any sort of discomfort, upper respiratory, dermal reaction over skins, itchy eyes, those kinds of things are a clear red flag. Well, we always say is if you see something, smell something, or feel something, do something.
15:20
Got it? Got it. So this smell, I would imagine is one of those telltale signs, right? So there’s that that mold smell, which is very distinct, I think many of us have smelled it. And it does come from that sort of damp environment. So I’ve got this going on. And all of a sudden, I start to notice changes in my body, maybe my breathing is impacted, maybe all of a sudden, I’m starting to become allergic to things. But what would you say is that quick sort of assessment to really know whether or not I have a mold problem?
15:51
Well, again, I would say that the smell is a dead giveaway. If you smell it, you have it. And so the most important thing about the smell is that it is the first signal that mold sends you, I think more and more about mold as being sort of this potentially even benevolent force. It sounds strange to say this, but moulage is doing its job. It’s not bothering anybody, you know, I mean, really, it’s not trying to bother, yes, it wants to eat your house. Fair enough. But it you know, it wants to eat. But really what it’s doing is it’s trying to send you that, that that musty smell, it’s sending you a signal that you have a moisture issue. And the key is to run towards that because the small mold problem is cheap to fix, easy to fix, mold, water damage, before it becomes mold is almost free to fix, you know, dry it out, cut it out. But the most important thing is to is to pick up that that be on the lookout for we’re on the sniff out for that musty odor because that is the first telltale sign and then what you have to do is find the source of the moisture like a detective and stop that moisture first, before you do anything about deodorising dehumidifying. Any, you want to demystify, that may very well be the source of the issue, which is a high humidity but there’s still going to be a source of the water coming in. That’s the root of that humidity. And so fixing that is number one. Symptoms are tricky, though. And I think that’s the crux of your question, because everybody has different reactions to this. So you might have five people living in a house with one mold problem, and all have different symptom profiles. And that’s very tricky. You know, so and many people actually, it’s very, very common for us to see five people one mole problem, five different symptom profiles. In fact, many people report no symptoms in the house. Usually the one reporting the most symptoms is, is the mom or the or the or the or the or the general caretaker or the caregiver. Rather, children are often generally because they spend more time indoors. And the pets also tend to be symptomatic in many cases, which is, you know, interesting because they tend to be closer to the ground. And they also have their own short nose dogs tend to have more issues with this the practice of aliquots. But the but the The interesting part is that when the mold abates, suddenly the people that didn’t have symptoms report, they don’t have sleep disturbances, they’re more emotionally regulated. They’re not having to blow their nose all the time. They don’t have any headaches or not having brain fog, oh, they had symptoms, but that had become their baseline, baseline become unhealthy. And they lived in it for so long, because and that’s the problem with this stuff is that we’re still working off of our grandmothers whitetail wives tales about mold. Again, the musty smell is just the way basements are that’s not true. That is that is a chemical factory of decay that’s occurring. And you are breathing that in and we’re viscerally affected by that stuff. And so we’re working off of those off of off of flawed information. That is generational generational ignorance is probably the best way to describe it.
18:52
Right, right. Yeah. And we see that often Right? And, okay, so let’s say we discovered that we have that that smell, we noticed that there is some sort of source that’s creating a lot of humidity in the area. Now we’ve decided to call people in and remove the mold. Now, can we actually remove the mold? And forgive me for this question, if it’s obvious, but can we remove the mold because I hear a lot that once you have a mold problem, it never goes away? Right? Are these these spores a stay forever? Do they you know, do they wait until the right environment and the conditions is set up for them to regrow? And this bio accumulation happened in our body?
19:30
Oh, yeah, there’s a lot a lot there. bioaccumulation is an individual thing. Yes, of course, you know, certain compounds tend to tend to build up in, in all people apparently, but some tend to build up more and others. And mycotoxins apparently tend to build up more and people that have issues with methylation pathways, detoxification pathways. But going back to can you remediate if you have a mold issue. So first of all, you I have done 1000s of assessments I’ve been doing through my company one 800 Got mold. I’ve been doing mold assessments and remediation consulting for almost 20 years. In fact, wait, it was 20 years on March 3. So there you go. Yeah, so yeah. Wow. So anyway, and that was yeah, that’s that’s a that’s quite a milestone that was just two weeks ago. So. And in that process, I can tell you that there’s only one house that was inhabited, that I went into that I said, this is not salvageable. Many houses, they went into and said, This is not habitable until it’s corrected. But in all cases, if they simply followed a very well established path, which is described in the industry standard, it’s called and this is something for the consumer to be aware, for anybody who’s concerned about this. It’s called the I C R CS 520. That’s SS and Sam mold remediation standard, put that in the shownotes. You can, because and the problem with that standard, by the way, is that it’s not published to the public. And we’re working on that, by the way, my friend, Carl Grimes, who’s the former president of the Indoor Air Quality Association, he and I are working on a consumer version of the industry standard for this purpose.
21:21
But mold, mold remediation is about mold removal. It is not about killing mold, which is contrary to popular opinion. Mold Remediation is a very simple process. But it’s not easy. It’s hard work. And that’s why most contractors don’t like to do it this way. Because it’s hard work. They like to get the big pay, but they don’t want to do the big work. So if you have a mold problem, and it’s let’s say it’s your finished basement, and it’s been identified by a qualified professional, whose, by the way, was independent inspector, ideally, who would do the necessary testing to make sure that it’s they know where it is, and that it’s not extended to other areas, and generates a remediation plan. That’s how it’s supposed to be done. And then the room so I look at like a mold inspection, kind of like a physical in a doctor’s office. And I look at remediation, a lot like surgery. And I feel like you wouldn’t have a pain and just immediately scheduled surgery, you’re going to have a physical. And so I always believe that that that a properly assessed mold issue is properly dealt, properly handled mold issue is assessed first by a qualified independent inspector. So but once you’re once you’re past that point, the mold has been identified, the extent of it’s been been been clearly delineated. And then the water problem has been corrected, which is the first and foremost and then the rest of it is a series of very formulaic steps, you’ll put a bubble around the work area, it’s called containment, basically, et phone home, you’ll establish what’s called negative air pressure, which means you’re ventilating that space so the dust created in that space stays in that space and doesn’t quote unquote, contaminate other areas. And so basically, it’s dust control. So think about that first phase is preparatory preparatory steps for dust control. And then and then it all is controlled interior demolition. So you’re going to have guys in there or gals wearing proper wearing PPE. Everyone knows on n95 mask is these this and and they’re going to cut out the effects of building materials that cannot be cleaned what can’t be cleaned sheetrock and not be made of paper and you can’t clean paper. Carpet carpet padding cannot be cleaned, porous and absorbent materials like like blinds and things like that generally cannot be cleaned in or should not be attempted unless they’re very expensive or sentimental. All that stuff is removed, the bulk removal is done. And then the exposed materials are then cleaned using HEPA filtered vacuum cleaners and damp wipes. There’s the motto of mold remediation is HEPA wipe HEPA, so you HEPA vacuum, then you wipe the dust that you have, because you’re creating more dust as you go, and that settles down. And so it’s just a manual cleaning and so a properly done job will they’ll clean those same surfaces 100 times and that’s an exaggeration. 10 times is a good remediation habit with HEPA HEPA wipe and then when it’s clean, you’d do it three more times. And while you’re running air purifiers you’re doing so that all you’re doing is cleaning surfaces, cleaning the air cleaning surfaces cleaning the air, and and by the time you’ve done that you’ve removed all the dust by the way people say what do you do about the mycotoxins? What do you do? How do you kill the mold? Well, firstly, you don’t have to kill them all the mold is being removed when you do all that cleaning. Second of all, mycotoxins are actually not their own. They they adhere to surfaces and they’re here to stop so they get stuck on them on the dust and the spores and so you clean up the dust and stuff. Guess what you do you clean up the mycotoxins too. So so the mycotoxin story is a big distraction from the reality. Mold is a moisture problem. All mold growth indoors is a hazard to your health. Cleaning up mold is a function of of it’s a rat recipe. If you follow the recipe, the outcomes are almost always the same. If you want to mangle the recipe, don’t be surprised if the outcomes aren’t the same. But in my experience, if someone’s willing to to actually go through the process of getting an inspection, defiling remediation, according to industry standard, and being willing to endure the discomfort associated with that, as with most things in life, and during the discomfort is the key to success.
25:26
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that’s, that’s a lot to unpack there. And for anyone listening, if they wanted to grab a quick test or something like that, I think you offer a kit, right? So with this kit, are they able to determine whether or not they have mold? And how does that work?
25:41
Sure, yeah. So. So we have a Mold Inspection Company, when 100 got mold, as I mentioned earlier, and that’s an in home service business. And those inspections are 1000 plus dollars, as most professional inspections are a number of years ago, out of frustration, for the fact that we were simply unable to help most of the people who call us in our inspections or simply you know, for our average customer, as a single family homeowner attempt tend to be fairly affluent. And so you know, the people who need us most can’t afford us, including, by the way my parents, they could not have afforded to hire our Mold Inspection Company, which is. So to close that loop, we put together a dream team of scientists and engineers to create a do it yourself test kit, called the got Mold Test Kit, which is, which is available@gmail.com. But there, the Gamo test kit uses the same devices that we use through our professional mold inspection business, called aerosol, because that’s our score traps. And the spore traps are designed to capture the airborne particles that are floating around in the air. And we created a an air sampling pump, which duplicates a professional air sampling pump Exactly. That allows the consumer to be able to do this without having to hire and schedule you know, buy a fight and hire a qualified professional. We partnered with the number one out of the country, and we’ll add PNK which means that you get the best results you could possibly hope to wish for. And and they’re excellent. So it comes with a prepaid mailer, all the shipping is included, there’s no surprise fees, all the lab fees are included. So there’s just no there’s no surprises whatsoever. And we just launched actually just before the new year. So we’re very excited about that. You can test the air in one, two or three rooms, depending upon your needs. And then once you’re done, if you can keep you can keep the air sampling pump and either share with a friend or you can reorder supplies for a discount. And, and for your listeners, we created a welcome page where, where you can where if you go to gmail.com/love fitness, you will see that there is a first of all, there’s a free ebook there called How to find mold. For anybody who is curious about this not quite ready to take the next step. But you know, you think you might have an issue and you’ve got some questions, we get a lot of positive feedback on that it’s 45 pages filled with inspection questionnaires, and checklists and and FAQs and sort of do’s and don’ts. We’re not pitching anything in that it’s really a it’s really a public service announcement for us. And then you also see a coupon code there for for anybody who wants to get a test kit, you get 10% off@gmail.com through fitness, Ken. So that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re doing there with that. And the idea behind that is that at the end of the day, we just want to give people the tools and knowledge they need to make better decisions about the air they breathe.
28:30
Yeah. Wow. That’s incredibly generous. And I think it’s really important right now. I mean, hopefully we are coming out of this pandemic, right, hopefully that things are clearing up. But the truth is, for the last couple of years, we’ve been locked in our houses, right, we’ve been asked not to go outdoors where we’re you know, some of us living in very cold places. So we’ve been indoors for so long. So just to rewind a little bit around some of the symptoms that you were sharing before I said that you could have a mold contamination and be impacted by mold. And this could show up in many different ways depending on the person and one of them could be an impact on mental health, again, something we see throughout this pandemic, right. But some of the things that you also share is that there’s a connection between mold and lime and the gut health of course sensitivities with certain foods and chemicals. And to your point, I think even growing up you had some allergies to certain foods, right? So can you just dive into that a little bit more?
29:26
Sure. There’s a lot there and we could probably do a whole podcast on that. But you know, there’s there’s a strange thing that people seem to forget when it comes to Well, first of all, Lyme disease and mold overlap a lot. And and there’s a various reasons for that, some of which are well understood, and many of which are probably still yet to be discovered. But the the primary the primary correlation, it seems to be that there’s a biotoxin that biotoxin purge mechanism. In other words, the ability to detoxify oneself that gets impacted. I tend to also think that people who have a lot My experience is that a lot of people with mold sensitivities also have had experiences with antibiotics. And if you think about what antibiotics are, they are mycotoxins. And so is it any coincidence that you would during a period of immune stress take huge quantities of coliform mycotoxins, it’s funny that you would develop a mold sensitivity. Right? So but no one talks about that. And, you know, this is this is something that just completely overlooked the antibiotics or mycotoxin in pill form, not all of them but most. And so we were so worried about getting mycotoxin exposure in small amounts by oral by by breathing, but the reality is that we’re taking them but but by the fistful when we’re sick with something and often overdoing it to the point where we’re creating, you know, resistant organisms. But the but the the chemical sensitivity thing is also very interesting, because the moldy smell, people who have chronic mold exposure tend to become chemically often become chemically sensitive to where they don’t want to, they can’t be around fragrances and, and paints and other things like that, because a lot of the chemicals that molds produce look a lot like they are solvents, if they were in bottled form, they would be the kind of thing that would take him off a trailer hitch, you know, like this is this is nasty stuff. And so there’s a tremendous overlap there in terms of the chemical sensitivities, like mold. The, there’s, there’s, there’s a there’s a whole sort of Venn diagram, if you will, where those things overlap. Did that answer your question?
31:35
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then, let’s say now to get into more of the cure, right. So obviously, we need to understand, okay, where’s the source? And we need to take care of the source of the mold, but then the cure inside our body? How, what is the process there? Is it really just separating ourselves from that moldy environment and then allowing the body to heal itself? Or is there another process and you know, sort of tests that we can even do to understand whether or not we have mold ourselves, and we need to do something about it.
32:05
The whole medical treatment side of things, I think, is a bit of a boondoggle to be honest with you. Because again, everyone that I know that for most of the doctors that are treating mold illness are really so focused on the mycotoxins because they’ve got some some tricks they picked up from the veterinarian trade where they you know, because animals that eat mycotoxin, they eat moldy grains get sick, and they’re very valuable. And so veterinarians know how to deal with this stuff. And so we actually use veterinary techniques to detox humans. We’ve studied this very little on humans very much on animals. And so, but they’re still focused on the wrong stuff, and focus on the mycotoxins and moldy environments without any of the toxigenic species make people very very, very sick every single day all across the world. And so, so what I always say is again, going to root cause much mycotoxin exposure by the way, I should mention it because a lot of people who are listening to this have had mycotoxin testing maybe they’ve done it you know through one of the one of the one of the labs, either blood or urine they probably got a doctor who’s or a care practitioner who’s telling them that you know, the watch the your levels and stuff like that. The first step is of course, always eliminate exposure, always right. So either if you have to relocate, you have to relocate, remediate, remediate. You know, the reason that we our test kit is so valuable to a lot of people is because they can cost effectively tests on the interim, they can do a quarterly if they wanted to seasonally if they wanted to. But first thing you want to do, the first step of detoxing is stop talks. Right? Right. So So remove yourself in the environment. The other step that you can take if you can’t do that is to get really good air filters. Air Purifiers you want true HEPA ideally that has a decent amount of carbon in it. I tend to I’m the one sitting next to my desk is made by mattify air, a big fan of that company. And so you want to get good HEPA filters and run them all the time to reduce exposure doesn’t negate the need to do the remediation, but it certainly cannot be reduced exposure and help you buy some time. The other thing is that in terms of exposure to these things, many mycotoxins and many mold related illness are dovetail right with with food. My experience is that my healing didn’t really occur until I got onto a no sugar, no grains diet because the vast majority of mycotoxin exposure for most people is in food. It’s in grains, moldy grains, moldy, sugary stuff, processed stuff. We Americans will import grains that have been turned away to other ports due to high mycotoxin levels. How do you like that? Peanut butter has a certain amount of allowable aflatoxin. Aflatoxin b1 is the most potent chemical carcinogen, no demand it’s actually the benchmark carcinogen and when against which other ones are compared. And there’s an allowable amount in our peanut butter in America. So welcome to you know, the Rs are SAD diet Right. But anyway, the the bottom line is that, that in order for you to get better, the first thing you have to do is remove exposures to these things. And so no sugar, no grains diet and anti inflammatory diet, because as you said earlier, psychiatric conditions are closely tied to mold exposure now, or being more closely connected to mold exposure. Now, in fact, some of the psychiatric clinics have reached out to us and they want to prescribe our test kit to every new patient because they’re seeing inflammation as the as a baseline as a consistent variable in every single one of their new intakes that signs up for a non relationship oriented psychiatric issue. Yeah, it’s crazy. So so really, truly reduce exposure, reduce or eliminate exposure will also reduce or eliminate food based exposures, and inflammation, inflammation triggers, that will also create that additional cascade. And then and then you want to facilitate detoxification in any way you can. Exercise, of course, is great, you know, saunas, and you know, sweating, if you want to you, there’s lots of stuff you can do before you go sign up for binders, and, and detoxification processes that are more formal to see how you get better. And I always encourage people to start, start there. Because oftentimes, if you just get out of the way your body knows what,
36:22
yeah, I agree. Well, I love how you brought that all together, and especially identifying the root cause take care of the root cause. But then there’s all these other things, right. And we have to now be mindful of gut health and what impacts gut health right. And so now let’s remove all the things that are causing inflammation, and tie in exercise. And really, for anyone who’s struggling to release weight or struggling with their health and fitness. I mean, this is a really great, great way to start, grab the test kit, and check to see if it is mold, right, we’re doing all the right things, yet there’s this constant exposure to toxins in our environment, and we’re thinking it’s us, but really, it’s all this other stuff that’s going on in the body. Wow, that’s, that’s so so powerful, Jason, so much, so much value today.
37:04
Thank you, by the way, I will, I will take that up a notch on the on the the carrying unnecessary weight and things like that there’s there’s evidence out there that HEPA filters help people lose weight. And I hate to say that, because you know that someone’s going to want to, you know, want to flame me for making claims, but I’m not selling air purifiers here. The The reality is that the indoor air quality for indoor air quality has been has been connected to all sorts of hormone dysregulation, including the hunger hormones. And so there’s there’s connection with poor indoor air quality and obesity, and of course, obesity and asthma is directly correlated. And that’s also an inflammatory condition and see just the whole thing, if you just get the Keep in mind, one thing, I’ll leave everyone with this, we have four basic human needs, air, water, food, shelter, you could argue the shelter and air, you know, they’re kind of almost one, it’s kind of the source of the other, it’s just some degree. And we take the building for granted that we but really, it’s an extension of our immune system, it’s an echo scanner, an exoskeleton. And of all the other the other three food we, you know, we eat a few times a day. And we were very focused on that as a society, even though we do a poor job, water, you know, you have to drink all the time. And boy, if you don’t do that, in three days, you’re gonna have problems, but air, we think about very little. And yeah, if you don’t have it for a few minutes, you’re in big trouble. And so the problem and the solution are both hiding right underneath the tip of your nose. And if you do the math on this, you know, you’re exposing the, the, you’re breathing 13 to 15 times a minute, which comes out to 20,000 times a day, this is your exposure to the world people, this is your exposure to the world, you’re re breathing the same stuff. And you have very little control over anything else in your the outdoor air. Many other things in this world, you have no control over, but you do have a lot of control over this. And the dividends associated with good indoor air quality can extend your life tremendously, and extend the quality of your life. And the penalties associated with not making those investments are also very steep. And it but you do have control here like almost nothing else in your life. And so my job here is to try to encourage people to exercise that control.
39:17
Wow, I love that. Thank you so much for that. You know, one thing that you shared with me before we started recording was our purpose here. And I think that you and I don’t want to butcher this. So I actually want to just set this up and then have you share it because it was so so powerful. And I really resonated with it. You said something along the lines that our purpose here is to find love and to overcome fear something along those lines, but you’re going to do a better job when you explain it. So can you just tap into that as sort of the concluding sort of message that we want to share today to all the listeners? Sure,
39:50
sure. I you know, I asked myself these existential questions a lot, you know, what’s the meaning of life and all this kind of stuff, and and a wild Am I kind of settled into this idea that we’re really here to learn how to love and to overcome fear, which is to say the same thing. Because in all cases, you can’t you can’t be in love and fear at the same time. And if so you’re mystifying one or the other is that oftentimes, I think, you know, the decisions we make, we make them from fear, they breed more fear, you can only get fear from fear. If you make them out of love, you get more love it just like you can’t get puppies from kittens, you know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you’re gonna you’re like, comes from like, and like attracts like. And so, but but the love for fear thing is that, you know, I know when I’m kissing my kids, when they’re gone away on it, when they’re leaving the house, they’re going to be away for a couple of days, I kiss him, I love them so much. And if I’m honest with myself, am I really saying I love them? Or am I actually really afraid that I’m not seeing them again. And so what we often call love, is often what will be called Love is often fear. And I think that when we’re going into the world here, and we’re making difficult choices, and I think about your story, in particular, when you when you found yourself, you know, ashamed that you couldn’t demonstrate the squat while you had opened up a gym and were a leader. And you know, the the the idea that you would become vulnerable, there was clearly a choice to love to be to towards love instead of fear. Because the fear would have just made you cover more covered, again, covered again, and the shame would have grown and groan, and the willingness to choose love, crack that open. And so, you know, for me, it’s been, all I’ve tried to do, as I became aware of this is, is to every single time I turn away from something because I’m ashamed of it. Instead, I try to turn toward it and make it visible. You know, Sunshine is the best disinfectant. But I also just think that there’s enough people out there that are looking for a little bit of hope. And if they can see a glimmer of it in your eyes. And, you know, that’s the fuel that sometimes people need to just take that one first step.
42:02
Yeah. Wow, I love that. So beautiful. And I always share that too. I think love is that secret sauce, that that ingredient that we need for transformation, right? When it comes from this place of fear. I mean, that that just continues to grow, and we limit ourselves. But when we really step into this place of love, and then realize everything we do for ourselves comes from this place of self love. And it’s just this constant giving to ourselves, because we deserve it. I mean, we just continue to fill our cup. And, and yeah, that spills over and it impacts everyone around us. So thank you so much. Really? Yeah. So Jason, if someone wanted to reach out to you, where’s the best place to go? You shared a place where people can download your your ebook and grab their test kit. But where else can they go to learn more about you and what you do?
42:47
Sure. God all.com is a great place if they want to go and ask questions. So if you go to gmail.com, scroll to the bottom, we’ve got a little got questions section there. And I look at all of those. So answer many of them. So if you just want to ask questions about mold, you can shoot you can do that. Also, we just started on Facebook, we’ve been in stealth mode while we’re building that. So we’re just getting started on social media. But you go to facebook.com. And you could post questions there too. And we will answer them publicly for the benefit of the public, which is a nice thing you might do to sort of share it forward, if you will. And and you can also always send question an email to questions at gotten old.com. And I will also be I also look at those. So if you’re interested in connecting on a professional basis, I’m on LinkedIn.
43:36
Amazing. Thank you so much. So for Facebook, it was it was it was also got mold as your is your Facebook page.
43:43
Yep, we’ve got mold facebook.com/got mold or app got mold. We’re also getting started with Instagram, if anybody wants to go there. And but we’re just started. We’re just getting started. So forgive the forgive this scant resources, but we’re just getting started. We got a lot of exciting stuff come in. So stay tuned.
44:01
Thank you so much, Jason. Really enjoyed talking to you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Pleasure
44:07
is mine truly Sure. Thank you.
44:11
Thanks for listening to this episode of fall in love with fitness. Whether you’re already on your fitness journey or just getting started, we’re in this together. Just head on over to iTunes, SUBSCRIBE and leave a review and you’ll be entered into the drawing to win my six-week Transformation Course. Then go to fall in love with fitness.com and get your free gift for me so you get back your energy and reinvigorate your life. Join me on the next episode and remember, you are an inspiration
