26. Mold & Chronic Illness: Symptoms, Testing, and Detox Strategies with Melanie Peers

Could mold be the missing link in your chronic health puzzle?

In this episode of The Histamine Well Podcast, Joanne speaks with Melanie Peers about the hidden impact of mold illness and how it can silently drive histamine intolerance, food sensitivities, and long-term inflammation.

You’ll discover how mold exposure can:

• Raise histamine levels and trigger mast cell activation
• Disrupt methylation and detoxification pathways
• Cause oxalate buildup and sulfur imbalances
• Lead to neurological, digestive, respiratory, and skin symptoms

Melanie shares how to spot the difference between everyday mold allergies and systemic mold-related illness, how to test for mold in your home and body, and what a mold detox protocol can look like in real life.

Whether you’re a health practitioner or someone struggling with unexplained symptoms, this episode gives you practical strategies for identifying mold, removing exposure, and supporting recovery.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Key symptoms of mold illness you might be missing
• How mold drives histamine intolerance and CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome)
• The mold–oxalate connection and why it matters for gut health
• Effective mold testing for your home and body
• Mold detox strategies and the role of sulfur in recovery
• Environmental tips for reducing mold exposure
• Real-life case studies of mold-related illness and recovery
  
  

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Transcript

0:00

Hi, it's Joanne. Mold illness is real. It's more common than most people realize, and it can drive up histamine, disrupt, methylation, and trigger a whole range of debilitating symptoms. For so many people, it goes undiagnosed for years, leaving them exhausted. Anxious, depressed, and dealing with nervous system dysfunction. Now, here's the thing. In allopathic medicine, the rhetoric is very different. Doctors will say mold is an allergen, or in rare cases, an infection risk, but they don't recognize it as a proven cause of chronic multi-system illness. So instead of getting answers. Patients are told it's all in their head, sent to psychiatrists and handed prescriptions for antidepressants, anxiety meds, or sleeping tablets. But I'm here to tell you the truth. We see patients with mold illness globally all the time. It's real. We can test for it and we can treat it.

Joanne Kennedy: 1:03

Welcome to the Histamine Well Podcast. Designed for practitioners and patients alike. This is your trusted source for insights on histamine intolerance, methylation, gut health, women's hormones, and much more. I'm Joanne Kennedy. Your host, naturopath, author, and educator. Passionate about breaking down complex science into clear, accessible knowledge. Whether you are a health professional or navigating your personal wellness journey, the Histamine Well Podcast bridges the gap between cutting edge research and practical understanding to empower you with the tools to thrive. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Histamine well. Today I'm joined again by my colleague, Melanie Peers, to discuss all things mold. A topic that's incredibly important and often missed in chronic health cases. We are diving into how mold drives up histamine, disrupts, methylation and sulfation, and how it's linked to oxalates. We'll also explore how mold causes a myriad of symptoms, how to detect it in the home, what testing to consider, and of course, where to start with treatment. Melanie has had her own journey with mold and her health. And she's a true expert in this space. Helping patients uncover and heal from hidden mold exposure. Mel, thank you so much again for coming on the show. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me. Pleasure, pleasure. So Melanie, what exactly is mold illness and how does it differ from typical allergic reactions to mold? Yeah, so there's quite a big difference between an allergy and mold illness. So an allergy is purely the immune system responding. It's a hyper reaction, and the body will produce antibodies, IgE antibodies against the mold particles. So you'll get typical allergy symptoms with that sneezing. You might even have anaphylactic reactions, itchiness, all sorts of, those allergy, itchy type presentations. Mold illness is a systemic response to mycotoxins produced by mold. The immune system is involved, but it will also affect many other body systems, your hormones, your gut, your nervous system, et cetera, et cetera. So you have a whole list of symptoms. We always say people come in with a laundry list of symptoms, almost every body system is affected, and that is the, the body responding in an inflammatory way to the toxins of the mold, not necessarily the mold itself. Mm. So Mel, do you wanna just go through some of the major symptoms? Sure. I'll go kind of through body systems. First of all, neurological is a really big one. Any sort of memory issues. Issues with word finding, short term memory, weak recall learning new information. You have to read things over and over again to take it in again. Even, you know, remembering a shopping list of ingredients. You might not even be able to remember five things on a shopping list. A lot of brain fog. You have a low resilience to stress. So a lot of people are very stressed out by seemingly minor things. There's a lot of anxiety, depression, headaches can be a really big one and fatigue. Then going over to the digestive system. Nearly everyone has digestive issues. Nearly everyone has sibo. That's probably the number one thing that I see. But bloating, constipation, diarrhea, food intolerances, reflux, nausea, multiple chemical sensitivity.'cause the liver's having trouble with detoxification. And then you might have some red flags in the respiratory system. I would say this is probably one of the least common things, which is one thing that really differentiates from the allergies is sometimes you'll get something like late onset asthma. If someone has asthma that they developed in adulthood, that's a really big red flag.'cause that tends to occur in childhood. If it's true asthma, you might get a cough, sinus congestion, hay fever like symptoms, wheezing, postnasal drip, shortness of breath, occasionally nosebleeds. You might get numbness or tingling in the extremities. Skin sensitivities, a real lack of strength. So people often notice a reduced resilience when it comes to exercise, so they can't recover quite so well, or they just can't lift the same weights or do the same things. Or even carrying shopping bags can become really tiring for them. Cramps, joint pain, stiffness in the muscles. You might see some skin reactions like eczema, rashes. You might get frequent electric shocks. That's another really strange symptom that some people tend to get. I certainly had that one. I had to always touch something before I touched my family members.'cause I would zap them all the time. Wow. Burning hands and feet. You might get sick a lot or never sick at all because the immune system is so suppressed. Histamine type reactions. You might get frequent, infections like UTIs, conjunctivitis, autoimmune conditions, mast cell activation, fungal infections. Wow. Really common. So as you can tell, lots of different body systems are involved in those symptoms. Yeah. So it's very debilitating for a person with mold illness. But also really complicated and hard for practitioners to work through all of that and to ascertain if it is mold because it could be sibo, it could be candida, it could be autoimmune, it could be heavy metal toxicity, it could be all these other things driving different it's like everybody's system could be anything, but what would you say are those real key things if someone says regarding symptoms that you're thinking it's mold. And not even exposure yet. Like, there's some key symptoms. So as for the fatigue and the memory issues, certainly. Yeah. because all of the other things that you just mentioned, quite often they do have those things. And it's like, at what point do you think. There's so many things going wrong that there's actually a different root cause. Yeah. So the laundry list of symptoms alone is a big one. But the fatigue, the memory issues, another really big one.'cause the gut, you know, everyone's pretty much got gut issues. So I don't necessarily flag that. But yeah, the crippling fatigue and memory issues. I find that chemical sensitivity is something that I think, oh, that I'll ask patients, can you walk down the aisle of a supermarket with the cleaning products? And they'll say, no way. Yeah. That will make them feel really, really unwell. So I think we first sort of need to stop here and let listeners know that I was rattling off all these different issues and conditions. SIBO and oxalates. They're actually caused from mold. A lot of those issues are caused from mold. Mel, what about I think also a big red flag is multiple food intolerances. When they're down to like five foods. That would be one. But also nearly every single person that comes through and sees us have already seen multiple practitioners. tried to heal my SIBO, I've tried to fix my hormones. I've done gone through the adrenal fatigue. I've done this, and it's just not working. Mm-hmm. Because again, all of these conditions, which on their own normally, you know, there's always a root cause for these conditions too. Always. It ends up being that the mold is the really big trigger. I agree. When patients say they've seen numerous practitioners have had this issue for a long time. They tick every box on the form. It's interesting. Having seen that many practitioners is such a red flag. It hasn't been picked up. And, you know, this is why Mel and I talk about mold so much in all the other episodes. Because as a practitioner, you have to pick this up in your patients. Whether you decide to specialize in mold, which is a really interesting space, or you refer, you have to pick it up because if you don't, this could go missed for many, many, many, many years. And if you do pick it up in them, and even if you have to refer on, they're gonna absolutely love you and refer their friends and family for you for helping them so much because, Mel, it can lead to cancer. Like this is the thing. Like it has to be picked up and it has to be taken seriously. Absolutely. For sure. And that's the thing, it's unfortunate. I always feel like it's a double-edged sword that I'm really happy that I'm finding an answer for you. I'm really sorry that it's your home that's making you sick, but just having an answer finally.'cause a lot of the time, even the test results are unremarkable. You see someone who comes in with all of these symptoms, you do a gut test. You expect to see off the charts type thing and it comes back and it's not too bad. Yeah. Nothing seems to be outta range. Yes. That's another thing. You might do a lot of blood testing and you go to the doctor and the doctor will say, you are fine. And you're like, well, I'm not fine, because your bloods are all kind of in range. That's another thing. Yeah. So it's like if you've been sick for a long time, you've seen so many practitioners, you've got a myriad of symptoms. Your bloods are all kind of in range, but you're so unwell. A case like that, I would stop and start thinking about mold straight away. But you're right. We can tell on the intake form'cause we've got that intake form nailed down, don't we? And so you see every box ticked in you, you like, I know what's coming. Yeah. Yeah. I know what's coming. So Mel, being the histamine well, I know that we've got a lot of histamine people listening. How exactly does mold drive up histamine? So part of the body response to the mold toxicity is inflammation. So as we know, histamine gets released as part of inflammation. That's the main driver that the mycotoxins will stimulate the mast cells as part of that generalized immune response. And we're not talking about antibodies, it's just that there's something here that I don't like that kind of that innate immune response that drives up histamine. Also because it creates just so much destruction in the body that it can damage the stability of the mast cells so they can start releasing histamine very easily. And just the signaling towards the mast cells to release more histamine. Histamine just gets released in huge amounts as a response of that inflammatory response. And really extreme cases when people get really bad, they can start to develop more of those allergy type symptoms because the histamine is so high. But most people, it's just a lot of the standard histamine, the gut symptoms or the heart palpitations the headaches. They're not quite at that like mast cell activation point where they're almost having anaphylactic reactions to things. But that can be a sign. Yeah, in the most extreme cases. Yeah, that can be a sign as well. Interesting. So Mel, before I go on, can you explain to patients what the difference is between mast cell activation syndrome and just like histamine intolerance. So Mars cell activation syndrome is more about specifically just the mast cells releasing histamine, whereas histamine intolerance tends to be more of a whole body response. So do we have a disruption to DAO enzyme breaking down DAO in the gut? It's not quite intense histamine intolerance, I should say. So mast cell activation syndrome becomes the immune system just goes completely haywire. Yeah, it goes haywire. And it's often caused from mold. Yeah, so mold is one of the primary drivers of mast cell Activation syndrome. And mold is also a main driver of chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Can you just chat to listeners about what serves actually is and how mold is a major cause of serves as well. So guys, mold causes mast cell activation syndrome. It causes histamine intolerance and it causes chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Yeah, absolutely. Chronic inflammatory response syndrome is exactly what it sounds like. It's chronic, so it goes for a long time, and it's an inflammatory response. The immune system isn't targeting the mold with antibodies, it's generating this general inflammation. So the example I use is when little kids get sick, they don't have that adaptive immunity. The innate immune system kicks in and that's generalized response. Your general, your fevers, your mucus production, things like that. Just a general response when the immune system goes, there's something here. We're raising the alarm bell. We're creating this inflammation. And then the adaptive immune system normally takes over. Yeah. But you kind of get stuck in this chronic inflammatory response where the alarm bell's going off, but nothing's coming to rescue you because the mold is just so persistent and the toxins are so persistent the body, yeah. It's just chronic, chronic inflammation. Yeah. Full body. Yeah. So what I understand is the innate immune system kicks in, which releases cytokines and inflammatory mediators and histamine. And then it doesn't get switched off because the adaptive immune system isn't to come in. That's the antibody part of the immune system. And it there, it doesn't mount an antibody response, which it's meant to. And so it just stays in this heightened chronic inflammation response. Yeah. And there's a few kind of trains of thoughts and it's kind of progressed a lot over the years of what we think drives that. So it used to be very much you are a susceptible individual based on your genetics, whether you can mount This adaptive immune response or not. But what we're starting to realize is how long you've been in the mold, your age, your prior health issues, they all come into the picture where even if you are not genetically susceptible. You can fall into this SIRS because you're in exposed to the inflammation for so long. Because even if the adaptive immune system does kick in and start attacking, we still have the toxicity that we're dealing with. You still have this chronic inflammation from the innate immune system that's raising the alarm bell constantly to try and get things fixed. So the body is just doing everything it can to try and correct this issue. And unfortunately, chronic inflammation is what it causes and then the inflammation causes so much damage everywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. So listeners, we deal so much with histamine, and I look at it like this. When people come in with things like sibo, large bowel dysbiosis, stress, estrogen dominance, digestive enzyme insufficiency, gluten intolerance, these things are driving up histamine, whereby the inflammation will just release histamine from cells. It's not necessarily mass cells. It can be smooth muscle cells that cells in your gut, the DAO enzyme gets overloaded with histamine. You just can't break it down. Methylation also comes into play because we also need methylation to break down histamine. And then we've got MCAS and CIRS, which in our patient group is mainly driven from mold.'cause it can also be driven from Lyme, which we don't see in a lot in Australia. But when patients ask me do I have MCAS or CIRS, it's like, well if you've got mold, potentially you could be heading in that direction. Yeah, yeah. For sure. And I would say just with in general MCAS patients, it's mold. That's the main driver. Yeah. Yeah. Even with tickborne illness,'cause that's what we kind of call it over here.'cause technically Lyme doesn't exist in Australia, so we say tickborne illness. A lot of the time there is mold that's suppressing the immune system to allow that to take over. they may have both. Yeah. That's so interesting. How often do we see that Mel? Whereby patients come to us getting a massive viral load from a famous virus that we might not mention. Yeah. And they've had mold exposure and their immune system's taxed and then they get the virus and then they fall down.'Cause their immune system can't cope with it. That's often the straw that breaks the camel's back. And people might say I was perfectly healthy beforehand, but when you actually get into the questioning, they were primed to have some sort of a dysfunction. Like it was already kind of there. They were almost there anyway. And that was enough to set it off. Yeah. And it sets it off. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, great. So just before I move on, my brain keeps going back to the vagus nerve, right?'Cause vagus nerve and gut issues and histamine and digestion and food intolerances is such a big link. So tell us about what mold is doing to the vagus nerve and the nervous system. Yeah. So it actually creates a huge, huge problem for the nervous system. And we cannot really get out of it without addressing the nervous system. You can't just do the gut stuff and the mold stuff. You really do have to work on the nervous system. And that's because again, this chronic inflammation. This signaling that is going in your body 24 7 saying, danger, danger. There's something wrong here. You're not safe. You're not safe. That part of your nervous system in the limbic system becomes hyper aroused and therefore starts over responding to absolutely everything in the environment. So the mold primes it and triggers it to be super sensitive. And then that starts the cascade of reactivity. And it's telling the immune system, okay, we're now reacting to this. So we might start with 80 foods that we can tolerate and that goes down to 60 and then goes down to 40. It is the gut that's causing an issue, but it's the messaging from the nervous system. And so you get a really low resilient to stress. You get autonomic nervous system dysfunction. So I always say to people the nervous system should be functioning. The autonomic nervous system should be functioning in a way that you never realize you go from sitting to standing with no issue. The nervous system is responding and adjusting your blood pressure accordingly. But that becomes disrupted and you get the pots and everything else that comes with the MCAS and the huge inflammation. So it's a huge, huge full body system problem. Yeah, it is. It is. And so my next question was actually how does mold lead to multiple food intolerances? And I think you've answered quite a bit of that. There's many ways. Yeah. It usually starts with the microbiome dysbiosis. And I always say to clients, you think about the very first antibiotic that was ever produced was penicillin from mold. Mold and bacteria, natural enemies in the environment. Mold is a natural antibiotic. So exposure to mold for a long period of time is like being on antibiotics for a long time. We know the impact of that on the gut. So there becomes a lot of dysbiosis. Beneficials are lowered and the opportunistics then can thrive and cause issues. Again, with the immune system dysregulation, there's so much immune tissue in the gut that becomes, you start getting these non IgE mediated food intolerances'cause the immune system is hyper reacting. And the gut. There's of course the histamine. So histamine's going to cause a histamine intolerance because you've got too much histamine in the body and just the toxicity of the mycotoxins. It's toxic to the intestinal cells. So you're gonna get what, gets called leaky gut or hyperpermeability. Where food particles are getting into the bloodstream when they shouldn't. That's triggering an immune response. You get reduced digestive enzyme production, reduced stomach acid production, that affects everything. And I always talk about our digestion is like a production line. If something goes wrong at the beginning of the production line, it impacts everything else that follows. So digestive enzymes and your HCL, you know, they're kind of top stream. If they start to dysfunction everything else afterwards will be impacted. Yeah. And that leads to a really common gut issue called sibo. Absolutely. And then we've got, you know, use silicates because you need sulfur. And so nutrient deficiencies then further exacerbate things. And it's not one thing that causes the food intolerances, it's just a multitude of factors. Yeah. But it's the mold that's driving it. It is all of this stuff. So Mel, what's the relationship with mold and oxalates? So, there's a few ways, but the main thing I would say is aspergillus. One of the most common molds that we see in water damage buildings produces oxalate as part of it metabolism. So that's producing more oxalates. So therefore our ability to cope with oxalate in the diet a little bit like with histamine, we have a reduced capacity to deal with what's coming in with the diet. We start to react to the food. Again, with the dysbiosis, we lose oxalate degrading bacteria like lactobacilli and oxalobacter. So that further impairs our ability to deal with obsolete. We can't detox oxalates. We can't really break them down. It's the bacteria that does that for us. So that really impairs the ability of the body to deal with that permeability of the gut. Again, oxalates are very small. They get into the bloodstream more easily when those tight junctions are affected. All the digestive issues that come from the mold exacerbate that things like fat mal absorption. Or we might start to go on a dairy-free diet'cause of our food intolerances. And the calcium, therefore doesn't bind to the oxalates. Our kidney function can be impaired by mold and we need our kidneys to help deal with the oxalates. And sulfur levels are really important too. Keeping a good balance of sulfur to stop the oxalate getting into the cell. That ends up becoming disrupted because our sulfur's being utilized to detox and so oxalates getting into the cell. Yeah. So this is why Mel, these patients are so unwell with the combination of the mold and the oxides and the sulfur depletion. Yeah. Because no one needs sulfur more than mold people. Because they need it for glutathione production and the sulfation pathway. That's a big detox pathway for a mold, isn't it? Yeah, for sure. So sulfur is just so critically important. So glucoronidation, glutathione conjugation, and sulfation are really important pathways that all require sulfur to function. Anyone who wants to know anything about sulfur, they can listen to the sulfur talk that we did because it's so critically important. It's the third most abundant nutrient in the body. So it's utilized for so many different things. Yeah. It's absolutely critical nutrient. And mold will produce a mycotoxin called gliotoxin, and in order to produce gliotoxin, it utilize sulfur. You start eating sulfur foods because they're really good to support detoxification pathways, but your body is taking that, or the mold is taking that and producing more gliotoxin, making you feel worse.'cause gliotoxin is a mycotoxin that's affecting all of these symptoms that we spoke about previously. You can get into this real tricky situation where you need sulfur so badly, but you can't tolerate it in the diet. So, yeah. So the gut microbiome, if you listen to the sulfur podcast, everyone, you'll hear us talk about how when the body is deplete of sulfur, it can up regulate or increase sulfur producing bacteria in the gut. There's too much sulfur in the gut and it's not being utilized properly. And then you consume sulfur foods. Eggs, red meat, brassica, vegetables, onion, garlic, you can feel it really sick. Eating those vegetables or foods, meats, air, meat and eggs, and the sulfur containing supplements like MSM, methionine, Sam E, n-acetylcysteine, glutathione, Taurine. If you are reacting to those, that is a big sign that you've got disruption in your sulfur metabolism. Mel, from my understanding, this is why we've got these food intolerances whereby the mold destroys the microbiome that we can't break down oxalates effectively. So we have an oxalate problem. We've got too many oxalates. It causes a disruption in your sulfur metabolism. Then the gut microbiome will increase these sulfur producing bacteria. So when you consume sulfur, you feel sick. So you're intolerant to sulfur foods. Mold causes sibo for sure. Then you can't tolerate FODMAP foods then the sulfur in the gut is so inflammatory. The oxalates are so inflammatory. SIBO is so inflammatory, it drives up histamine. And that causes massive issues with, you can't tolerate histamine foods. And then the other thing is that you need sulfur to break down salicylates. Yeah. And then you become intolerant to salicylate food. So this is why we have patients come to us with, they cannot eat any plant foods and they can't eat red meat and eggs. So they eat chicken and rice. Yeah. If they're lucky. So this is what happens. And then also, as Mel was saying, when the vagus nerve gets inflamed, it's not working properly. And the sympathetic nervous system is on high alert. It's under threat. It's in fight and flight. It's not in rest and digest. I say this to my patients all the time, you're not in rest and digest. I'm like, really? Listen, write that down 10 times. And they're like. Okay. Like I really understand. Like because of the vagus nerve being so disrupted with the mold mycotoxins and the inflammation that they literally are in fight and flight constantly, not in rest and digest. When you're in fight and flight, you have massive hormone dysregulation and you have big issues with your sleep. Yeah. And so it becomes very chicken and egg, doesn't it? Yeah. It's just a nightmare. Yeah. And you fight or flight, you're not making stomach acid, making digestive enzymes. And so Yeah. It is a bit of a chicken and egg. Yeah. And unfortunately people come to me, especially'cause you're a naturopath. I'm a nutritionist, and they come to the nutritionist thinking she's gonna gimme something what can I eat? Yeah. What's the diet that's gonna fix me that makes me feel better? And it's like, there is no food really that's low histamine, low sulfur, or low fodmap, low salicylate. There isn't, so you've gotta fix the problem. Yeah. You have to fix the problem. And getting outta the mold is really important, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Before we go any further, I want to speak directly to the practitioners and students listening. If you're intrigued by histamine and methylation and eager to expand your knowledge in this fascinating area we offer the Histamine and Methylation online group coaching course. The only program of its kind. It covers everything you need to know about histamine and methylation, providing both the theory and guidance you need to treat these issues effectively in clinical practice. We cover sibo, hormonal imbalances, oxalates, M-T-H-F-R, the four pathways of methylation, including the folate pathway, methionine pathway, tetrahydro biopterin pathway, and the all important transsulfuration pathway and much more. The program is delivered by detailed online webinars and handouts for you to keep. And for eight weeks you'll meet with me for live coaching calls in a private community space with other practitioners from all over the world dealing with histamine and methylation issues in their patients every day. Together we learn so much. To learn more and apply, visit joannekennedynaturopathy.com. So Mel, I'm actually gonna ask you now to sort of chat to listeners around how you can assess your house for mold. Okay. So there's a few different things that you can do. I guess the first thing is just look around and really pay attention if there is any signs. You don't even need to look for mold. You need to look for water and water intrusion.'cause if there's water coming into your home, it's not getting out. You have mold. So cracked paint, warping of like timber flooring or any sort of building materials, cracks, anything that suggests that there might be water getting in in the ceiling, your skirting boards, your flooring. Any signs that you, have you had any previous leaks? Has the dishwasher or the washing machine leaked? Have you had rain coming? You left a window open and rain's come in while you've been away? Or does it leak when it rains? Any signs of any sort of water damage going on? I remember once I went to an Airbnb and I stood on the tiles in the en suite and it made a slushy sound and I just went, oh my Lord. Like, oh gosh, there is clearly water, a waterproofing issue in this bathroom, and it's getting in under the floor. There is a hundred percent gonna be mold there. I did not use that bathroom after that and got out of there as good as I could. So any signs of water intrusion coming into the home, I often tell people, go and grab a, just go to Bunnings for about$40. You can buy a moisture meter and you would just run your shower and check any walls for different signs. So you can start with a dry sample and then run your shower, see whether it's leaking into your wardrobe, for example. Obviously anywhere that gets wet, any wet carpet. If it rains and the carpet's wet, there's a leak somewhere. Yeah. What I would really encourage if it's in your budget, is to get a building biologist in. They will come in, they know what to look for. They have all the devices that they need to see, like infrared cameras to see where there's cold spots. They can do air and surface sampling and can tell you what's going on.'cause I can tell you homes can look perfectly fine and still have a mold issue. I've got a long list of stories I could tell you about clients that I've seen, but there's two in particular that I'll mention. One was, it's a brand new home. We finally lived here for 18 months. There's nothing wrong. There's no mold. It doesn't smell funny. And we got the building biologist in the shower in the en suite was leaking. They cut a hole to have a look, could see all the mold. The little girl who was my patient flared massively just by that because it was releasing the mold into the air. And then they noticed, they were like, wow. Yeah. Can you just tell us about this little girl and what her symptoms were?'cause I remember her. She can't even go to school, can she? She, no. We identify that the school was potentially an issue because when she changed classrooms, the symptoms got worse. The one thing I do in particular remember about that family is'cause I always ask about other people who live in the home and pets. And they're like, actually the cat became really constipated and started losing its fur. But she had just massive food intolerances. She was a little bit more of an allergy type'cause she was only about eight, I think from memory, a lot of, you know, sick all the time, getting coughs, itchy eyes, eczema, the dark circles under the eyes. She was, yeah, really, really struggling. She couldn't tolerate very much at all. Very, very full histamine bucket for her. And you know, it, we had to get the building biologist in to find out. Because this is the thing, people think it's brand new. It's fine. And yeah, there, there is no home is safe from the effects of mold if water's getting in. So the thing I say about new builds, especially here in Australia, they are knocking buildings up so quickly these days that they're getting in subcontractors who are just maybe not doing the waterproofing correctly or anything that stops water from getting into the home, whether it be the tiling or whatever on the roof that there's defects in the construction. The timber framing is being left out in the pouring rain or even the slab and not allowed to dry properly before they fully build it up. Mm-hmm. So that happens. And then you've got your older homes. Older homes can sometimes be better because they're better constructed. Yeah. As far as they don't make things like they used to. No home is immune to the effects of water intrusion. If there's a way that it's getting in. Anything that doesn't get much sunlight is a potential problem. And one client who's living in a rainforest, please don't buy a house in a rainforest. Yes. It's just dump all the time. That was A girl a while ago, wasn't it? When you first started with me. Yeah. She had it in the cupboard and I remember she did get some improvement just from moving out. Yeah. She moved out. I think by the time she saw us, and she'd already noticed some improvement, but we needed to deal with the fallout there. And then another one, she was adamant. There's no mold here. There's no mold here. It was coming up on her organic acid test that came up on a urinary mycotoxin test that she had mold. Finally got a building biologist in and they found, I think it was a leak in the shower. It was just going into the wall cavity. So listeners, like, I know we go on about mold all the time, but it's just because of what we do for work. You know, all the time. All day. Well, that three days a week for me. Three days for you. 12 years for me, seven years from Mel. When people come to me full of histamine. And it's not just a SIBO case. SIBO is simple. It's just like bloating, funky bowels, constipation, diarrhea, some histamine reactions. Simple. Or if you are obviously very estrogen dominant woman or in perimenopause, that crazy time, you know, that's just sort of a histamine issue. Or if someone's just chronically constipated from stress, that's just a histamine can get that moving. Or if you've got too many oxalates just'cause you've gone crazy high oxalate diet. When you sort of don't fit into these more simple picture cases for us and you're full of histamine, it's so telling for us really quickly. And as we were saying at the beginning, if you tick every box on our form, if you go through the list of symptoms that Melanie was talking to you about at the beginning of the episode and write them down, you'll find that you have so many of them. If you've been to so many practitioners and you've got the histamine's just constantly high. You can't get them down, then there's not many other things that it could be. That's what I'm trying to say. People say to me, how do you know? I'm like, because you're a bucket of histamine and it's not coming just from sibo, just from oxalates, just from constipation, just from estrogen. You might have all those issues because of mold, but there's an underlying driver and we see it all the time globally, don't we, Mel? Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, it's that histamine overload. You go on a low histamine diet. As you said, a simple case generally they come back and think we're miracle workers after two weeks. They feel amazing on a low histamine diet. If you're in mold, it'll probably take the edge off a little bit. It'll reduce some of your symptoms, may make you cope with life a little bit better, but it won't resolve them. No, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And guys, good news, we can test for mold as we can test it in the house. There's testing that we can do to assess it in the body. So Mel, do you wanna chat about the testing available? Yeah, for sure. Just back to the home, so you can do there are samples that you can take in your home to do air and surface sampling. There's some DIY kits that you can do out there. I will say nothing is perfect and so often it needs to be a collection of things that you take. Your case history, the samples. The mycotoxin test for example. You can't always tell with just one thing, but it's about building a case. With as far as the body goes, urinary mycotoxin test is the number one test that you could probably take that will tell you what you're exposed to. Now, we were having a chat about this just yesterday, that there is a discrepancy with provoking or not. So if you do the test, if you order the test, before you see a practitioner, it will say to not take any detox supplements. Do anything to support your detoxification. Now, before you go wasting your money, that can be a problem because if you are so full of mold and your detoxification pathways are so impaired, you may have a false negative. Mm-hmm. And you will think, great. I don't have a mold problem because nothing came up on the urinary mycotoxin test. This is testing for metabolites in your urine that your body is processing It can be a false negative if you do that. So I just encourage to speak to a practitioner before you order that test to make sure that you're doing everything you can, because it's not necessarily the numbers on that test. Like obviously it's gonna show whether you're in range or not. I don't wanna see any mycotoxins on that test. But if you provoke with something like glutathione or infrared sauna, yes, it's going to increase the numbers on your test. That's not really what's that relevant? Whether they're there or not is what's relevant. Yeah. If they're there or not, is what's relevant. Yeah. So people might think, as I said, that they don't have a mold problem and in fact they're probably worse off than most people'cause they're not even excreting any mycotoxins. It's just, yeah. I had a patient like that in the us. He was just a bucket of mold. He knew. He knew how sick he felt in his house and he could see mold in the house, water damage. And he did a, my mold mycotoxins test and it was just flatline, like nothing. He had nothing came out. I asked him if he provoked with anything. He said no. So it literally means that he can't detoxify it at all. So if you do that testing and don't get advice, you might think you're clear of mycotoxin. Absolutely. So that's a really, yeah. If you see mold in your environment and you are not seeing it on the test, there's a really big problem. I had another example where someone who had done the urinary mycotoxin test before they came to see me and the day before she'd been down in her storage unit in the basement car park where she knew there was mold and she had huge numbers on her test. So we know Okay. That was part of that very recent exposure. She was very close to. But at least we knew that she was detoxifying. And at least we know mold is an issue. If you were re that amount of mold, you've had the exposure, whether it was in the home or in the garage. Yeah, it's interesting. So people can get so sick even if the mold's in the garage? Yeah. If they're visiting in it regularly enough or their belongings have been in that garage. Yeah. And they come in the house and it really depends on. I said a lot of factors. That's why we have to spend so much time talking to people and listening and asking the questions. How long have they been exposed? Do their belongings come with them from different mouldy environments? But a couple of things that will really stand out to people that are listening, is if you do your own little timeline, we have a saying never will since, which is very telling. Because even the ones that I can't necessarily get to, believe me straight away that it's mold, they go back and they crunch the numbers and they go, oh, we moved into the home and six months later the health tanked. Yeah, they're health tanked. Yeah. Or do you go on holiday and feel improvement? Can you eat a little bit more? Does the brain frog lift? Have you got a little bit more energy? And people often think, oh, I'm not stressed. I'm on holidays. I had one woman who flew from. Sydney to Cannes and by the time the plane landed, she already felt drastically improved. Wow. She was able to drink alcohol. She ate histamine food. She still reacted but not as strongly. Whereas at home she had to be extremely strict and she was still reacting more. Yeah. It can happen that fast. Your body just starts detoxifying as soon as you get out of it. Can cope with the load. Yeah. So Mel, can you just tell people about like that it's the microtoxins and microscopic, so we can often see water damage, we can see mold, but we can't see the microtoxins and they get into your furniture and your bedding and the carpet and everywhere. Yeah, absolutely. And in your body. Yeah, so in like in the gyprock or drywall as they call it in America. So it could be in the wool cavity and it can diffuse through. gyprock into the airspace, so you might not even see it. Mm-hmm. And if you can see mold, it's already a very significant colonization because mold in itself is very small, but the mycotoxins are even smaller. It doesn't even need to travel through the bloodstream. It can diffuse between cells from cell to cell. So they're absolutely tiny. So there's nothing like that you can test. But as we said, the urinary mycotoxins is a really good test. Organic acid tests, we love that test. There's a few markers on that one. So there's a few strains of mold that it will test for. Not everyone shows that. I'd say it's probably 50 50. So if that comes back clear, that doesn't mean that there's nothing there. We know what to look for on the organic acid test as well, because other markers will move in a way that suggests that the mold is a problem. So we look for those in the organic acid test, and that's a really great value for money test, I think because the urinary mycotoxin test is just testing urinary mycotoxins, whereas organic acid tests, it's like neurotransmitters, it's nutrient levels, it's looking at gut dysbiosis and bacteria and fungal. Candida nearly always shows up. I would probably actually say in everyone. Isn't arabinose a sugar produced from yeast that is a food source for mould. Yeah. That is the marker for yeast or fungal for candida usually. So yeah, we can see that on the organic acid test. Another test people often like to do is the visual contrast sensitivity test. It's about$15 online. That's not really super diagnostic. Like it usually tells us what we already know, but it's fantastic for monitoring progress when you're improving. Okay. So you can take that as a baseline when you're sick and then as you start to improve, you can start testing that, but you know, it's still inflamation. And one other thing I always kind of look for is like homocysteine. Everyone's looking for it being high for methylation issues. But if you've got low homocysteine, that tells us there's a little bit of a sulfur problem, whether it's just the body's utilizing a lot of sulfur or you have a full sulfur issue. So there's some tests that I would look at. I don't pay any really attention to any blood histamine testing. I don't find necessarily correlates. You might see some inflammatory markers on your bloods, like your ESR and your CRP, but not always. They're not always super elevated. Some of them really, really high. One thing I would encourage people to pay attention to which is a very commonly tested in bloods by the doctor, is your bilirubin levels. So I've found quite a few people have got very elevated bilirubin levels. And that suggests that they're having issues with glucoronidation pathway. Now, it could be that they've got Gilbert Syndrome, but it could also be that pathway just very blocked up because of mold. So looking for anything with bilirubin, anything over 13 could be another marker. Which will certainly tell you that detoxification is a problem for you if your bilirubin is elevated. Interesting. Oh gosh. I remember several patients with that problem. It's like the mold is blocking the glucuronidation pathway and therefore your bilirubin builds up. Yeah. It can build up. Or you could be somebody who generally has high bilirubin. You know, with Gilbert Syndrome, which would make you very susceptible to mold. I'm dealing with someone at the moment who has a sibling who also has very similar issues, and I said, find out, do we both have a bilirubin problem? Because that will impair your ability to detoxify lots of things. Not just mold, but glucoronidation is one of the main pathways that most of the mold toxins will be cleared through. So Mel, any other tests? What about genetic testing? So you can have the HLA testing done. The H-L-A-D-Q-D-R testing done. That will suggest whether you are one of those people who the body doesn't make the antibodies to the mold and makes you a little bit more susceptible. I used to use that one a lot more. I don't use it so much now because I'm actually finding that there are people that don't have that genetic susceptibility, but because they've got other factors that impair the detoxification or the stress and other lifestyle factors, that has a really big impact as well. So i'm not using it quite so much anymore. If someone's got it, I'll look at it. Yeah. It's interesting because it's like, you can just be overloaded with mold and nothing to do with your gene mutation. You just have significant exposure and blocked detoxification pathways. Yeah, absolutely. With or without the gene. Yeah, without the gene. Or you might have SNP's in other detox pathways. You know, like your Gilberts or other things, or glutathione production. But you might be the person who the moldies part of the house is your bedroom. You are gonna get the most sick out of everybody in that home. It could be that you've been more stressed and you're more susceptible. There's a lot of different factors that we're starting to realize about mold. It's not just about you can or can't mount an appropriate immune response. Yeah. Yeah. It's multifactorial. Mm-hmm. So, Mel, where do people start with treatment? If you can, mold avoidance is number one You know, I say to a lot of people when you remove the exposure, a lot of things will improve and then you deal with what hasn't improved. So reducing at the very least, your exposure to the mold, whether that be if someone's still in the environment and can't get out for several months, or can't remediate just yet. Creating a safe space where you're as far away from the mold as possible. Minimal belongings that may feed the mold, like books and dust and things like ornaments are gonna collect dust. Just keep it very simple. Cleaning your clothing that may have mycotoxins in it. But avoidance is the number one strategy. So remediation or vacating. Then I always talk about drainage, not just detoxification because if you are constipated, you are not detoxifying very much at all because the liver will dump the toxins into the bile. The bile goes into the large intestine and we poop them out. If you are not emptying your bowels every day at a minimum, then you are likely re some of those toxins. So moving the bowels, getting the kidneys working well, hydrating electrolytes, sweating, moving your lymphatic system, they're all really important parts of getting the drainage happening. Because if there's nothing to drain it out, it doesn't really matter about improving the detoxification'cause there's nowhere for it to go. It needs to exit the body. You might not have a sulfur issue to feel bad when you take glutathione because it's stimulating more detox, but it's, there's nowhere for it to go. Yeah, you've gotta open up your drainage. And then, and only then would you start on any sort of a binder to try and bind up to the toxins. If you're not emptying your bowels every day, you don't even consider using binders just yet. You can use things like fiber as a very gentle way to do it, but ideally there's specific binders that you do use for mycotoxins. Yeah. Which binder do you use? I use a multi binder because different binders bind to different mycotoxins. Mycopul from research Nutritional. Is that what it is? Oh, researched nutritionals. Yeah. Yeah, I use that one as well. Yeah, I generally use that one. Quicksilver. You can use Quicksilver as well. But the main thing being it's multi binder. Yeah. If you have at least activated charcoal and, probiotics specifically? Sb generally covering most of them. We want charcoal, aloe vera, a few different things. Oh, aloe vera, is that a binder? Yeah. It just can just help with the general digestion in the bile flow. That's why I like, there's multi products because they're binding, but they're also helping that bile move. Yep. Because if that bile is not moving, that's another part of that drainage part. You might have very thick, sticky bile that's not really going anywhere that needs to drain to clear the toxins. Yeah. Interesting. And what about glutathione? Do you tend to use that or people react to it? Yeah, I find people can be quite reactive. So it really depends. And I do really like when we do have the urinary mycotoxin results. Just because if you do have gliotoxin in your results, we treat that a little bit differently because. That gliotoxin is gonna be reactive to the sulfur. The mold's gonna use that sulfur to make gliotoxin. So we actually don't use glutathione in that instance. So testing is really helpful. If you get mycophenolate acid, the NPA on your urinary mycotoxin test, you can be pretty sure that you have an active and current mold exposure because that's not a mycotoxin. That's a metabolite of mold and it only stays in the body for a short time. So if you have that on your test, you have active exposure. But yeah, glutathione can be helpful because it's supporting detox. That's interesting what you said about that mold marker, not a mycotoxin marker. I think listeners need to know is you can move house and you still have your mycotoxins in your body. You need to support detoxification of that and you also need to deal with your belongings because your belongings are gonna have the mycotoxins. Yes, for sure. When we moved, we replaced a lot of our belongings. Fortunately I said to say to a lot of people, my children were a little bit older by that point, so we'd been through the toddler phase where they'd destroyed all our dining table and everything. So we were about new for an upgrade, which was fortunate. But we allowed new mattresses, new pillows, because we were in that moldy house for a long time. And Mel, you've really healed from mold, haven't you? Absolutely. Look, I still think there are some residual things that I'm still working on. Because we still live in a very toxic world and very stressful world. But yeah, and I'm happy to share my experience with patients because I think it helps give them hope and realize that I do understand where they've been. But when we moved out of the moldy environment within two weeks, my husband actually said to me, you are using your words a lot better. So I had really difficulty with word finding. I was just naturally getting up and taking the dog for a walk for 20 minutes without having to really like, struggle and like really convince myself. I was happy to just get up and do it. Things just seemed a little bit easier. And when you're in mold, you are trying so hard to do all the things, right? People come in with an immaculate diet. They're moving their bodies, they're exercising, they're taking the supplements, they're doing everything. And it's like being stuck in the mud. They're just not getting anywhere. And it's really frustrating. Yeah. Everything just becomes easier when you're out of it because things start working properly again. You still have the toxicity in your body that you have to deal with, but that huge burden of toxins coming at you on a daily basis has dropped. Yeah. Great. Mel, thanks for sharing your story with us. So listeners, Melanie sees our mold patients, so if you suspect you've got an issue with mold, you can make an appointment with Melanie via our website, which is joanne kennedy naturopathy.com. Unfortunately she can't see patients in the US or Canada. If you do suspect you've got mold and wanna chat to me about my opinions. If you do, absolutely happy to see you. I can then refer you off to a mold specialist in the US. If you just wanna get my take on it, especially with regards to the sulfur issue in the methylation issue, in the oxalates and things like that. So, Mel, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. Unfortunately, this is a topic I know far too much about. I never intended to be in this space, but unfortunately when then these things happen to you, it just becomes, you can't unsee it anymore. I can't unsee mold in my patients anymore because it's just so obvious to me now.

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Mel, thank you. That was great. I really appreciate your time, so thank you so much. That was awesome. I think we covered a lot. I hope everyone enjoys the episode. Thanks Mel. Thanks. So thank you for joining me. I hope you found this episode beneficial. Be sure to subscribe to the histamine well so you don't miss an episode. Leave a review and you can also share this episode with someone who could benefit. If you have any questions you'd like answered. Or have a topic you'd like me to discuss, please go to my website, joanne kennedy naturopathy.com, where you can provide us with that information. Until next time, take care and be well.