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A lot of the people that I consult with, that are dealing with an an Adrenal Fatigue problem, are looking for the root cause. Many times, adrenal fatigue is secondary to mold. Mold exposure from the home, So, in this blog post, I want to bring about mold and environmental illness awareness, and the relationship between Adrenal Fatigue and mold in your home.
Did you know that 70% of the environmental mold experts in the industry are a sole proprietors or mom and pops?
What is really frightening is that there really aren’t many rules out there. There’s not a lot of regulations around Mold Inspection, or mold remediation. In fact, there are only four states that actually issue licensure to become a mold professional.
So as you can imagine, if there’s no regulation, and it’s a very decentralized industry, then you have a wide variety of assessors and remediators out there, and no one’s really policing this stuff.
In fact, if you said tomorrow you wanted to become a professional in this field, with no training whatsoever, they could be and that’s frightening.
Whenever we access our clients and what is causing their adrenal fatigue, we look at their genetic susceptibilities, what’s unique to them (or their blueprint), then we look at the environmental triggers and how those impact the blueprint, those environmental triggers are ultimately the environment that they live in. So mold inside your home has to be on your radar.
Especially when you are cooped up in the home all day.
After speaking to a leading expert in the business, you should understand that a proper assessment of mold in the home requires really informing and educating the home owner. To really inform and equip people to understand what their options are, what should they expect, in a typical Mold Inspection, or environmental testing.
That part of the service strictly isn’t just mold and testing for other things inside an environment.
If you don’t take a look at the environment and ascertain what’s going on there, we’re never going to get the optimal results or outcomes that you are hoping to get.
Be aware that a lot of the mold inspectors out there are called “pump jockeys”. Where they’ll come in, and they’ll take a real quick air sample. And that’s it.
The problem with that is the sample is only really, it’s a slice of the pie. A good inspection includes the following 3 areas of assessment.
It starts out with moisture, mold, and mycotoxins. Most homeowners understand that they have to have a moisture issue in order to have a mold problem. And so inspectors should begin there starting inspecting the property from the exterior, looking for moisture, penetrations, slope issues, flooding issues, roofing issues, things of that nature, and then doing the same thing on the inside of the home.
Next, recommended are a variety of sampling protocols. Some that could be PCR testing or DNA testing for molds that get down to the species level.
A thorough investigation includes surface sampling, and cavity sampling, which tests for moisture issues inside of a wall so that you can understand if there are mold growth or fungal growth inside of that wall cavity.
Next, sampling for mycotoxins inside of a structure is important.
The other environmental toxins to test for in the home that should be tested for are things like formaldehyde, benzene, and things of that nature,
It all starts with the inspection and then testing behind that
Many clients that I consult with the have had adrenal fatigue and tests their homes for mold will come back negative.
What’s going on there?
You have to consider that someone may have done minimal sampling or have had dry auger plates, which comes back negative.
So be careful about basing the decision on just limited information. That’s why it’s so important to go through the three-step process.
So I think it really begins with that moisture inspection using infrared thermal cameras, moisture meters, hygrometers borescopes, which are little video cameras that you put inside of a wall cavity. It’s that kind of level of detail that really needs to occur. And then we know as it comes to fungal mycotoxin production.
Which is a whole other issue.
Because there are different kinds of mycotoxins at the species level, it’s really important to identify what mycotoxins you have.
So going in and doing that PCR testing (DNA testing), in addition to test for genus levels is essential,
Then coming back and testing at the species level, whether it’s a ERMI test is a great test.
An ERMI test people are very familiar with to understand the species level because it’s the species level, that will dictate mycotoxin production, and then a different another layer to that is, okay.
This answers the question, do we actually have mycotoxins?
Because a mold species can produce mycotoxins doesn’t necessarily mean that it is producing them. So it’s good information to understand if those molds are producing the mycotoxins as well.
The other thing to understand is the scoring on the ERMI test is a little problematic, because it takes group samples. Meaning, it takes group one and group two, and subtracts out the totals from group two from group one, and that’s your score.
So you can get zero by being really, really clean, which is great.
Or you can get zero by being really moldy in group two, which isn’t quite so great.
So again, just understanding each test what each test the strengths and weaknesses are, is critical.
A good mold professional or assessor will understand that.
Keep in mind, the mold can present in your home, your work, or even your vehicle.
What to ask a mold inspector:
Do they understand mold illness?
Do they work with health care providers that would recommend their services?
How did they test for mycotoxins?
Do they offer treatment for mycotoxins?
What’s the difference between mold and mycotoxins:
Molds are fungi, they need oxygen and they need moisture to live.
The mycotoxin is a secondary metabolite produced by fungi, which is a nonliving chemical in essence that’s produced by about 300 species of molds.
So if an inspector doesn’t know the difference between mycotoxins and molds, and they’re just testing for molds, then they’re not giving you a full picture.
If the mold inspector just comes in and take air samples, and they don’t assess the moisture be sure to show them the door really quickly.