My Symptoms Were Mold Illness All Along

For years and years, I was chronically ill and unable to figure out why. No one could help me figure out what was causing my symptoms, which included severe eczema, nasal allergies, IBS, and more. Finally, I learned that toxic mold exposure was the main contributor. During the process of trying to figure out why I was sick, I learned so much about indoor air quality, diet, really any way to heal. That's why I started this channel: so you don't have to wait as long as I did to find relief.
This video also contains the extended version of a conversation I had with David Fontaine, a systems engineer who is chair of the scientific outreach committee at Change the Air Foundation. David makes a compelling case that exposure to mold spores and mycotoxins could play a role in so many chronic illnesses we're experiencing today.
Introduction - 0:00
My symptoms - 0:13
How I was exposed to mold - 2:54
The problem with the medical field - 3:48
My recovery (briefly) - 5:44
Talk with mold expert David Fontaine:
RESEARCH SHOWS THAT MOST HOMES HAVE TOXIC MOLDS - 6:48
Routes of exposure - 8:38
Health effects of mold...is there scientific research? - 10:57
Why isn't this issue getting the attention it deserves? - 12:40
David's own mold illness story - 14:10
Treating mold isn't the silver bullet - 15:40
What to do if you suspect you have mold illness (after talking to your doctor, of course) - 15:54
Mold Illness Resources:
-changetheairfoundation.org/
-www.changetheairsummit.org/
-"Conception to Grave" (some research studies on mold illness): drive.google.com/file/d/1_2yJ...
Please go ahead and like this video, subscribe, comment, and SHARE, especially if you feel that more people should be aware of the information I’m sharing.

[@cathycooke]

Nice job. As a nutritionist and mold inspector, this topic could not be more important. Like you, my clients have gone through YEARS of suffering b/c they are not only dismissed by the medical community, but they are also gaslit by many mold inspectors. You're fortunate that you were able to find the source of the mold in your home, often it hides, and a few air samples are NOT adequate. Sadly this is what most inspectors do. Please make sure you get a good inspector who takes you seriously and go the extra mile to find the mold in your home!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Thank you for your great comment 🙂 That’s good advice. Yes - I’ve had a few mold inspectors gaslight me, mislead me, and tell me to do things that put me in harms way. Took me a while to find a good one. I’m also surprised that none of them used dust testing - only air sampling. People like us need to keep preaching about this. Keep it up!

[@cathycooke]

agreed. We just have to keep talking ;)@@HealthyHomeGuide

[@Sweetp520]

How can we find a good educated expert to test my home

[@warrioroflight801]

Glutathione IV's in high doses will bee your best friend in detoxification of mold. Took my two years to start feeling my best and its a job everyday to stay healthy. Good Luck🙏🏼

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

I took glutathione capsules for 6 months and they helped me so much. IV sounds interesting, thank you.

[@AdoptedMike]

Damn! Now I totally understand your passion for healthy environments. Great job researching and sharing with us. Thanks!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Precisely 😊

[@randygonzalez5758]

You mentioned that u finally figured out u had mold illness, and you went to special doctors, and are now on a treatment plan to get u to finally feel better. If you could, please provide additional details on how u figured that out, what type of doc ur seeing, and current steps ur taking for continued treatment Also, you look SO much more healthy now than when u first started ur vids. Big congrats!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

That's a great suggestion, I'll definitely make a video about that in the future. It's a loooong story. Thanks for your support.

[@Weesson]

Yeah definitely can relate to this I got stick in early 2019 spending over 4 years figuring it out. No one being able to help and giving you treatments that don't work, costing you: money, time, stress. Just like you I was persistent enough to figure out the whole picture, not focusing on one particular thing and getting better myself. What a mindset shift is it to be sick and to get better, going though all these rabbit holes. Realizing how everyone is scamming or misleading sick people like us by not treating the cause(s) including those functional, holistic, conventional doctors, mold remediators, and HVAC/Home contractors . All these broken systems combining taking advantage of less knowledgably people.

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Well said. I totally relate to the rabbit holes. So many rabbit holes that led nowhere, to dead ends, to darkness. I feel like the placebo effect stopped working on me because I eventually expected every remedy to fail.

[@NurseAcrobat]

I'm glad you're getting answers and feeling better. Ever since I was a kid I had a stuffy nose. After reading various yoga books as a teenager I thought it was normal to only be able to breathe through one nostril at a time. It took getting married to have someone (my wife) say my mouth breathing wasn't normal. After getting tested by an allergist I was said to not have any allergies, just "non allergic rhinitis", which really just means they don't know why my nose was stuffy. Nasal corticosteroids helped but weren't ideal as a long term solution, though the amount of extra oxygen I got once I could breathe through both nostrils without effort felt intoxicating. After beginning to snore I had a sleep study and no sleep apnea was noted. It took another few years to get more answers. A new dental hygienist asked if I'd ever considered braces so I went to an orthodontist. They didn't think I needed braces but saw something in my dental x ray that was concerning for potential cancer so sent me to an oral/dental surgeon. They did a CT of my jaw, said everything looked fine, but asked if I was aware I had a sinus infection. They sent me to an Ear Nose Throat doctor with the CT, prescribed antibiotics, and for the first time in nearly 30 years I could breathe through both nostrils without taking something like flonase. It's been ~3 years and I've felt better ever since, but it's bizarre to me that it took going to a dental surgeon to note that I had a sinus infection, after years of seeing allergists/ENTs. I never had any pain in the area, just decades of nasal stuffiness. While antibiotics helped, adding a dehumidifier and ERV for fresh air have made the air in my home feel consistently better than before.

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

"Non-allergic rhinitis" Wow hahah. Being in the medical field myself, I've heard a lot of "we don't know" euphemisms but that one takes the cake. That's so annoying that you had to go to a dental surgeon to find out you had a sinus infection after a long road of going to ENTs: the people who should be diagnosing that in the first place. Glad you got that sorted out. Breathing through one's nose has so many benefits too! An ERV+dehumidifier is such a god send. I'd go so far as to say that ERV+dehumidifier+air purifier is the holy trinity of IAQ.

[@marcelinosepulveda840]

Hi Alex, my wife is struggling with health issues triggered by living in a house that had black mold. We didn’t know it had mold until after we moved out and she was sick by then. As you described, it’s been a really challenging process to figure out what will help her. She’s gotten much better over the years, inflammation reactions aren’t as big as they used to be but they still occur. Can u share how you went about tackling your health issues? What type of doctor finally helped you? Did you do blood work? Any recommendations or resources you can share will be greatly appreciated. I’d love to hear more of your story. Keep up the good work!!

[@laroccad18]

A great video once again! Thank you for producing these and spreading this knowledge. Do you have a video or information on a good way of testing air quality for mold and such? Possibly the best way, most cost effective way, and best minimal way of testing? Would love to hear how you tested your house to find out. Thank you for all the work you do!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

I'm glad you appreciate it! That's a fantastic question. There are a bunch of ways to test mold. Two well-regarded ways are air sampling and dust testing, and it's best to use these ways in conjunction with each other with a trained IEP. If you're looking for a good minimal way of testing on your own, just to get a quick picture of your situation, the ERMI dust test is probably the easiest one. In the future, I'll make videos on both of these methods.

[@laroccad18]

Looking forward to the videos in the future! Planning on doing most of these tests and improvements prior to moving into a house. Thank you!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

@@laroccad18 Good idea! Being proactive like that is smart.

[@SianaGearz]

It's silly to suggest that doctors don't think mould causes illness... it's just that it's outside their sphere of view because for one "who even lives in a mouldy house, one knows not to do that", and for other, it's just... like what are they gonna do, prescribe you a better home? What you work with and how you interact with the world shapes how you view things and what things you prioritise or ignore. You know they say if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail; well they have thousands of hammers, but household mould disease just doesn't happen to be one of the nails. I know there's a ton of things where they will say "you're going to have to adjust nutrition" or "this is trouble, you best reduce or give up smoking", but that's because the resulting diseases have a very visible health system profile and so they're part of the curriculum as are the non medical interventions. Also remember "somebody else's problem field" from Hitchhiker's Guide. I wonder though, you say American homes; obviously here in Europe houses are built very very differently, but i wonder, how does it affect mycotoxins, is it a marked improvement? I mean most of the issue is that you don't necessarily need to see mould to have mould, there are a lot of possible structures where it could be hiding. Even if it is better, it doesn't mean the resulting disease is any less overlooked, because for doctors that's still "somebody else's problem field".

[@VenturaIT]

did you get a GC-MS test of your air and a real-time VOC monitoring?

[@weiss27md]

I think we're being exposed to mold but everyone keeps saying everything looks fine. I found mold on about half the lumber in the attic but everyone says it can't affect our health. Even though I can smell it.

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Right. A lot of people are not informed about mold. Fortunately, awareness is spreading.

[@Slipperypuffin]

My dad feels pins and needles in his arms when he's close to mold. Trust your spidey senses, y'all!

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Absolutely! David Fontaine, the guy in the video, has a similar power.

[@aleva898]

Are there any plants you are aware of that can combat mold in different forms?

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

I'm a plant lover myself, but I don't know of any plants that don't harbor mold. The soil in potted plants tends to be a great environment for some allergenic mold species, unfortunately.

[@Lechuque]

If your diet is heavy plant based, try a high fat carnivore diet for a few months, the results will shock you in a positive way. At least look at some carnivore channels like Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Paul Saladino and Dr. Anthony Chaffee.

[@shao3241]

Thoughts on allergy skin tests/allergy immunotherapy?

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Good question! Mold illness is far more than just a simple allergy. Watch the video called “More than an Allergy” with Dr. Sandeep Gupta at changetheairsummit.org (link in description if they remove this one) for more info.

[@shao3241]

@@HealthyHomeGuide I didn't think it was the same as an allergy. do we agree that some immune responses are justified such as toxic mold and some immune responses are unjustified such as pet dander or bed bug excrument? or are even those immune responses something to manage on an environment level opposed to an immunity level?

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Ah, I see what you're asking now. That is one of the more interesting questions I've gotten on this channel. My mind is going in a million different directions. I'll have to think about how to answer this.

[@shao3241]

@@HealthyHomeGuide Curious if you've developed any hypothesizes or made any observations regarding the subject matter. I understand that you may not be done, but perhaps having a dialogue will help to further develop your ideas.

[@figpal4381]

Wow ... I have been itching for over a year and the itching may have triggered a cellulitis outbreak in May 2023. Maybe mold or bad air quality is an issue in my home.

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

I’m glad you found my channel - mold/air quality could certainly be a playing a role! Itching/cellulitis is no fun, my heart goes out to you.

[@Sweetp520]

❤ what do you think ? Sounds good if its not a scam . I have scam fobia🙃

[@capcom4eva]

Hydrogen peroxide kills mold?

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Yes indeed. Very effectively.

[@mgmchenry]

Absolutely kills it exactly one time. If you have mold, you have the conditions that allow mold to grow, and the mold will be back. You have to address whatever allowed the mold to grow in the first place. If you see mold, there is more mold you don't see.

[@erikjohnson4275]

"Doesn't blame doctors"? Net even a little bit? As told in FOUR of Dr Ritchie Shoemakers books, toxic mold started "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" forty years ago and they never told you about this. (That's pretty sad) What about the doctors who were fully aware but STILL didn't tell you? No thoughts of criticism for them either?

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

Erik Johnson Okay, maybe I blame them a little 😅 I think most doctors aren’t actively trying to cover up mold illness though, right? Maybe I’m naive. Anyway, believe me, I have a lot of anger towards the medical field. I just don’t think it’s productive for me personally to spread blame. I want to help this world heal, and I don’t think that lambasting people publicly is the best way to do that. I want doctors on our side. Outrage can certainly get things done but I’ll leave that to a different channel 🙂 That being said, I’m considering making a future video about the shortcomings of the medical field.

[@erikjohnson4275]

@@HealthyHomeGuide Perhaps when you learn just how hard they fought to deny dismiss and suppress this evidence. I can tell you this. The failure to take a stand against these con artists is why this wasn't mainstream forty years ago.

[@HealthyHomeGuide]

I’ll admit, I’m already starting to get angry hearing about the history. How can I learn more? Any good resources?

[@juliemccord2031]

Erik Johnson at Exposing Mold

[@erikjohnson4275]

@@HealthyHomeGuide Exposing Mold is the only group telling the real history of toxic mold and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. How the entire medical profession declared war on clear and simple evidence that no reasonable person could deny.