18: Mold toxicity could be causing your insomnia

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Why You Can't Sleep podcast. If you struggle to sleep and you've tried what seems like everything, you are in the right place. There are imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake, and you're going to learn what they are in this show. Now, let's kick off this episode with an inspiring success story from one of my clients who has significantly improved their sleep by correcting the underlying health issues that were causing their insomnia.

"I love just having a plan, you know, like, it wasn't. Here's your prescription, and that's all I got for you. It was, okay, we're going to work together for this time. And slowly we added supplements, and then once those were done and working, you know, we just fully took them away and just having the support as well. If I needed to email you, answer right away. And finally, having somebody, you know, in my court where I was, I didn't feel like I'm in this alone. It was very helpful to know, like, okay, I have a team here, so I think it was about two months, and then I weaned off of it. Um, I was very nervous, you know, little by little, I was, like, making them smaller, but it really, you know, I was able to come off and an average sleeping, like, seven to 8 hours per night and just feeling a lot better."

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode. Today, I am talking about mold toxicity. If you don't know anything about this and you don't think you have this, I still suggest listening, because about a third of people with chronic health problems are reacting to mold, and they have no idea. And so this could be you, especially if you have a lot of different weird symptoms. Now, if your only symptom is insomnia and otherwise you're pretty healthy, you don't have anything else going on, then this probably doesn't apply to you. But I just want you to know that mold toxicity isn't overlooked and honestly a common cause of insomnia. You know, I'm working with six clients right now who have this going on, and this is a main reason why they aren't sleeping.

And so I want to explain how what happens in the body with mold toxicity, why it leads to sleep issues and what you can do about it. You know, I just want you to know, too, that you could be living in mold and not even know. It's not always visible. Sometimes it can be hidden behind the walls or in your h vac system, and you don't know it's there, but you're reacting to it, or it's possible that you were exposed to mold in the past and your body hasn't been able to detoxify it properly. And I just want you to know how common this is, because it's estimated that 75% of homes have water damage and 25% of the population has a gene that puts them at risk for developing what's called chronic inflammatory response syndrome when they're exposed to mold. So this syndrome causes many different symptoms and many different systems of the body. It's definitely not my favorite thing to tell clients that they might be dealing with mold, but it does explain what could be causing their insomnia. So this is especially true.

Like a lot of the clients I'm working with now with mold, they've been to many other practitioners and doctors. Right, right. They've tried the conventional medicine route. They've even been to functional medicine doctors and naturopaths who didn't know about mold. And so they're trying to address the gut and address hormones and all the things that are necessary to address. But if you are living in mold and reacting to mold, you're not going to get better until you deal with that mold. So it's so important. Mold toxicity affects sleep because it causes inflammation and stress in the body.

And then different systems break down under all this stress. And the brain is a main target of this chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And so many people develop insomnia and mental health issues from being toxic to this. So let me explain what chronic inflammatory response syndrome is. This is when the immune system doesn't respond properly in, again, the 25% of people who can't detoxify mold. To explain this, you need to know that we have two types of immunity or two branches of our immune system. So there's the nonspecific immunity that happens when you're initially exposed to a toxin. Say you're exposed to mold, or your body produces cytokines, which are very nonspecific.

They're just like, okay, there's inflammation, there's a toxin, send in the troops. So that happens the first few days after you're exposed to something, and then the specific immunity kicks in, and that's when your body produces antibodies to specifically attack that toxin, which then ideally eliminates a toxin, and then it turns off that general or non specific immune system. Now, it can help. I'm going to have visuals of this on my blog post on my website. If you want to be able to see how this works, then I suggest going to completesleepsolution.com. and go to the blog and find the mold toxicity episode so that you'll be able to visually see what's going on here with the immune system. Okay, so what happens in an ideal immune system? This is what should happen. When you're exposed to a toxin, your body releases those cytokines that cause general inflammation

So that's that nonspecific immunity. And then your body produces antibodies to specifically attack the toxin. So then it takes care of it, and, and your symptoms go away and you return back to normal. Now, in the chronic inflammatory response syndrome, if you have this, you're exposed to a toxin, your body produces the cytokines, so it has that nonspecific immune response, but no antibodies are made, so the specific immune system doesn't kick in, and so the toxins persist, they stay in your body, and the inflammatory response continues, which is going to lead to illness over time. Now, the symptoms of this CRas can overlap with other syndromes, such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. However, symptoms like increased urination and static electrical shocks are more common in this chronic inflammatory response syndrome than those other conditions. And I should mention, too, mold is the most common cause of chronic inflammatory response syndrome. But Lyme disease also causes this, and there are other less common causes of this as well.

Now, there are four steps to dealing with this. First of all, you need to test for mold toxicity and Sears chronic inflammatory response syndrome in your body. So you need to find out if that's what's going on in your body. Then you need to see if there's mold in your environment. Because, again, if you're being in molden and you're reacting to it, you're not going to get better, even if you address what's going on in the body. And then you need to remove all sources of mold. So in your environment, so that is called remediation, where you can diy this, or you can hire someone to come in and remove the mold from your environment. And then you need to detoxify your body from mold.

And I'm going to walk you through all these steps and what I do with my clients. So first you want to test for mold in the body. So the first thing I do, and this is in my questionnaire for all of my new clients, is there are 13 symptom clusters that Doctor Shoemaker, who specializes, he's the expert in mold toxicity, he kind of realized that this chronic inflammatory response syndrome from mold is what's causing illness in a lot of people. So he's studied and found these symptom clusters, and if you have six or more symptoms in each cluster, then you're likely dealing with this syndrome. The symptoms are, there are many different ones, so I'm not going to list them all here. Again, you can go to my website, to the blog about mold toxicity, and I'll have them there where you can google them. But, you know, some of the main ones are going to be fatigue, numbness, ice pick pains, night sweats, memory loss, joint pain, unusual skin sensations, or tingling. Sinus congestion is a really common cause of mold that isn't recognized.

So if you have sinus congestion, infections, post nasal drip, anything like that, there's a good chance that that is for mold, increase urinary frequency, sensitivity to light. So these are just some of them. Again, I'm not going to list them all. So if you're having all these weird, random symptoms that no one's able to figure out why this is likely, what's going on for you. So, next, if. If my clients say that they're. If they check off at least six of these, then I had them do an inexpensive test. It's called a visual contrast sensitivity test, online.

This is a $15 test. And if you fail this test and you have seven or more of those symptom clusters, then there's a 98.5% chance that you have chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And this is validated with a study using these two assessments, the symptoms and that visual contrast sensitivity test, I usually conclude that mold toxicity is what's going on, and I give an appropriate protocol to deal with this. Now, I can also run two other tests to verify. There's an organic acids test, or the oat test looks for mold, and then there is a mycotox test. So there is, first of all, you're exposed to mold spores. And then once those spores get in your body, usually inhaled, then your body produces mycotoxins are produced. And so a lot of times, people actually reacting to the mycotoxins from the mold.

Alissa Wolfe:

This mycotox test is testing for that. There's also a mark on test. So this is a nasal test because these mycotoxins can again, like, thrive in the nasal cavities, causing that congestion. And so that will confirm if that's what's going on there. Mold can be expensive, especially if you're dealing with having to remove it from your house. I don't run these tests unless people want to, unless they want to spend the money on this and know for sure, because we can just assume if you have all these symptom clusters and you fail that visual contrast sensitivity test, then you likely have mold. And so we can deal with it that way. The next thing you want to do is test for mold in your environment.

So, and usually this is in the home and that's where we spend most of our time. But again, this is critical because you're not going to get better if you're living in mold and you're reacting to it. So there are three options for this. The least expensive way is a company called Immunolytics that offers DIY mold testing. So you order these plates for $3 each and you can test a few rooms in your, in your home and see if mold grows over five or seven days. There's also an ermi test. So this is, erm, I test where you send a dust sample back to the lab and then they analyze it for you. This costs about $250.

And then you could also hire an inspector to come to your home. Ideally, he would do an ermy test, and a hertzme test is what it's called. I mean, that is the best option to have a professional do that. But you do want to look for someone who knows about sirs or this chronic inflammatory response syndrome. So the next thing you want to do is if your home does have mold and you want to deal with that. So you want to clean your air, first of all. And this is something you can do right away. And I had a client who his symptoms and sleep started improving just by getting an air purifier in his home.

I like one called medify air. I think they're about $100 for a small room. And they're a HEPA air filter. So they're filtering out 99 point something percent of those air toxins. Now, you definitely want to remove the mold. So that's that remediation that I mentioned. And you want to address the underlying causes of mold growth. So things like moisture and water damage, condensation, humidity.

It's recommended to have your home at 50% humidity or less so that mold can't thrive. And then you want to deal with the mold in your body. And so that involves opening up drainage pathways. So this means that you want to be peeing, pooping and sweating. That's how toxins are released for our body. So that should be happening often. You want to support your liver and then you want to use detox binders. So these things, they're things like activated charcoal or zeolite powder, things like that that bind to the toxins.

And pull them out of the body so your liver doesn't have to deal with them, and so they are circulating around causing all this inflammation. And I recommend different ones for my clients. Depending on what strains of mycotoxins are dealing with and what strains of mold, you also want to spend time outside as much as possible. You want to get sunshine as much as possible. Anytime you're dusting and cleaning, you want to be wearing a mask, so you are inhaling those spores. It can help to eat a low mold diet, and you also do need to address other imbalances in your body. So from mold toxicity, that affects every system in the body where hormones get out of balance. Gluten sensitivity is really common with mold toxicity because mold damages the gut so much over time and affects our immune system, you want to deal with any sources of inflammation with gut pathogens.

Candida is a common fungus or yeast that accompanies mold toxicity. So usually people have candida when they have mold toxicity. I hope that this helps explain. If you're dealing with a lot of really weird symptoms and you haven't been able to get help, then this is what is likely going on for you. So even though mold can cause these symptoms and severe sickness, some people are really sick from this. It's actually relatively simple to deal with once you know that it's there. And so if you can't sleep and have other weird symptoms, mold could be the culprit. And this is what I can help you with so that you can get to the bottom of this. Restore your health so that you can sleep normally.

As you've been learning from this podcast, the way to sleep better is to find the imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake. I created the Insomnia Insight program so you'll know what these imbalances are and have a plan to fix them in just 30 days. In the insomnia Insight program, my team and I use four functional lab tests as well as assessments to look for everything that could be affecting your sleep so we don't miss anything. Then we will give you a personalized, holistic, 90 day plan to get your body back in balance so you can get the deep sleep that you want. You'll know exactly which supplements and habits your body needs. No more trying to find the magic pill or following advice you find online that just doesn't work for you. You'll also get support for six months with weekly live coaching calls and daily chat messaging to get all of your questions answered. This will ensure your plan is successful so your sleep keeps improving.

You'll also have access to valuable training such as smart sleeper habits, where you'll learn evidence based habits that will help you sleep more peacefully. You'll learn smart sleep are essential so you can fall asleep fast and stop the 03:00 a.m. wake ups by finding the perfect diet for your body and by balancing your blood sugar. And the smart sleeper mindset will help you get rid of negative thoughts and anxiety about sleep so that your mind doesn't sabotage you. The program also includes bonuses such as how to get out of fight or flight and calm your nervous system, how to minimize toxins and support your liver, how to make changing habits easier, all so that you can restore your health and sleep deeply. There will also be challenges, so you stay motivated to follow your protocol and to celebrate as your sleep keeps improving. There will be monthly bonus trainings to further improve your health, mindset and sleep. There will also be customized case reviews available, so if your sleep hasn't improved in three months, you can submit a case review where we will review your results and plan and tell you exactly what to do next to make sure you're successful in the program. And if you sign up from this podcast, you can get a special bonus, a customized sleep jump start plan. We will give you top reaction steps to improve your sleep right away, as soon as you sign up while we're waiting for your test results.

The investment for the Insomnia Insight program is $2,500, plus the costs of the lab tests, which are around $1,000. There is financing available from advancecarecard.com. you can find out more about the program and sign up at the link in the show notes. In the Insomnia Insight program, you'll know the imbalances that are causing your sleep issues, and you'll have a plan to fix them in just 30 days so that you can sleep better and make the difference you're meant to make in the world..

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