Category:

Q & A’s

Reader Q & A: We are Reacting to EVERYTHING—Is it Mold Cross Contamination or Our Environment in General?

by Catherine 3:57 pm

When You Seem to be Sick Outside as Much as Inside….

My ultimate goal with this blog is to attempt to make this whole “mold thing” simpler. The concept of mold cross contamination happens to be one of the more confusing and debated pieces of the mold puzzle. I am going to try to tackle some of the difficult to understand, confusing, and conflicting information on that topic today and to break it down and present it to you in a way that makes some sense. In doing so, I hope each of you will feel empowered to use some of the tools and protocols I write about (that actually work, might I add) to take control of your situations and environments, so that you can get better and get on with your lives. That is also the main reason why I like sharing reader Q & A’s so much. I believe that by sharing some of my one-on-one correspondence, I can help others who have the same or similar questions–if there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that many people have questions, but very few actually take the time to ask.

That being said, not all personal advice is universally viable, because each of us is unique and should tweak and omit things according to what works best for our lives and bodies. Overall, though, I believe our goals are the same and hinge on adopting a “new normal” that

1) works to attain and keep wellness, and

2) doesn’t create fear or anxiety in the process.

To achieve those goals, you have to

1) learn as much information as possible about mold and why it makes you sick, and

2) learn as much information as possible about products and treatments that work for mold-related illness.

There is no magic cure, obviously, but there are some things that have, over time, proven to be more efficacious than others. That is where today’s reader Q & A comes in. It is a discussion that starts with a question about cross contamination, but that spans much more than that. It gets into the topic of cumulative body burden from previous mold exposures, how much your surroundings and outdoor environment matter to your recovery, and how using what you already know about your body’s reaction to mold helps you to make informed choices about your future.

To bring you up to speed with exactly what this reader is dealing with, I will share some portions of her email:

3:57 pm 0 comment

Personal Stories Q & A's Wellness

Learning to LIVE Post Mold Illness Diagnosis

by Catherine 4:16 pm

Embracing Your “New Normal” May Be the Key to Letting Go of Fear and Feeling More Like Yourself Again

The longer I write this blog and build relationships within our community of readers, the more those interactions impact what I write about. Often your questions are at the forefront of my mind when I am writing my weekly post. Sometimes, I have even been writing about an entirely different topic but get such an excellent reader question, that I halt and reroute everything I am doing to share it instead. Then, on days like today, I just cannot ignore the feeling that I NEED to write about a topic, because it has impacted one of you and is weighing on my heart. This is one of those posts.

A reader who I have gotten to know through our email correspondence is about to embark on her first travel experience since being impacted by mold illness. Her home environment is finally under control, and she is feeling much better. (Her main symptom was debilitating and chronic fatigue.) These days, she is doing all of the “right” things with mold maintenance and mold avoidance and is extremely proactive about taking charge of her health.

This reader has also been very inspiring for me to communicate with—asking me detailed questions about cleaning methods and practices I use in our home and always thinking out-of-the-box to make products and techniques do double-duty to be more effective and cost efficient. But, with her trip on the horizon, doubt, fear, and anxiety have started to impede her positive momentum. So much so that, rather than being able to focus on her current good health and upcoming travel, she is stuck worrying about all of the potential mold situations she may encounter along-the-way. She is already foreseeing challenges to remain well in new and unknown indoor environments.

To help her get ready for her trip, we have communicated in detail about products to pack, how she can purify her space and air on the airplane, and what mold maintenance and avoidance actions to take when she arrives at her destination. (If you want to read more about these techniques, HERE is my post on travel.) In other words, “on paper,” she is totally prepared and ready for this trip and knows exactly what to do.

4:16 pm 4 comments

Cleaning Tips Healthy Home Mold Prevention Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Q & A's

How To Find and Maintain a Mold-Free Mattress

by Catherine 12:16 pm

Deconstructing the mattress-buying process can help mold patients find and maintain a healthier sleep environment.

Just the other day, I got the following question from a reader:

“Hello. I was wondering if you could recommend a mattress that is good for mold patients? Also, do you have information on how to clean a mattress before you bring it into your home and how to protect it. Maybe a dust cover?”

What a great question! But, it is one that is actually more difficult to give a straight answer for than you would think!

Before getting sick from mold, I never really thought twice about my mattress. I actually think every mattress I had ever had prior to getting married was a hand-me-down mattress from either my parents or one of my sisters. I was always happy to not have to purchase a new one, and to just sleep on whichever one was given to me. Sleep came easy to me then, and the “health” of my mattress did not seem to affect my body whatsoever.

Fast forward to where I am today and where my health is today, (much better, but I still am and will be forever, I think, very mold- and chemically- sensitive); and I feel entirely differently about the whole mattress situation. In fact, my mattress has been one of the items in my home to either make or break a wellness spurt. When you consider the fact that we spend 1/3 of our lives in bed/sleeping, this makes a lot of sense. If your bed and mattress aren’t healthy, you probably will suffer the effects of that. It became clear to me that I was going to have to rethink my mattress when we finally moved back into our home and had to get all new furnishings. Our new mattress sent me into a downward health spiral. My husband had found an allergy-friendly foam mattress and had it delivered to the house. The minute he unwrapped it in our bedroom, I knew it wasn’t going to work for me. It was off-gassing terribly and made my throat and body itch just to be in the same room with it. It literally took me a week to recover and to get the plastic-y, chemically smell out of our room. Have you ever tasted a smell? That is the best way I can describe just how inflammatory it was to my body. I tasted the chemicals from the mattress in my mouth! Thankfully, we were able to return it for a full refund. But, finding another mattress was quite the ordeal. Who would have thought that there was so much to worry about and consider in terms of my health and what mattress I was sleeping on?

12:16 pm 4 comments

Healthy Home Mold Prevention Mold Remediation Personal Stories Q & A's

Reader Q & A: Air Quality Issues With In-Slab HVAC Ducts and Knowing When It’s Time to Call a Professional for Help

by Catherine 10:04 pm

This week, I am going to devote time to answering and sharing a recent mold/indoor air quality issue question that came my way. It concerns a very specific way of installing HVAC ductwork, where the HVAC ducts have been placed in or below the concrete floor slab. To better illustrate this to you, I asked a contractor to describe the installation process to me. Here is what he said:

“As the home is being built, trenches are dug in the soil before the concrete foundation is poured. Wooden or concrete blocks are then placed in the trenches and the HVAC ducts are pieced together and placed in the trenches on top of the blocks according to the home’s layout and the HVAC blueprint. Many times, the ducts are in direct contact with the soil. Concrete is then poured around the ducts as they lay in the trenches. Finally, the concrete slab is poured on top of the ducts/trenches to form the home’s foundation.”

This practice of in-slab ducting has become notorious for different types of problems, like functional troubles (lack of air flow or collapsed ductwork), and environmental problems (radon, odors, flooding, mold, insects). The main reason I want to address this question on the blog is because of the many indoor air quality issues inherent in this type of construction that I think people need to be made aware of. I also think this question is an important one, because it involves all of the components of needing to be a “mold detective” and a health advocate for yourself. This is because watching out for potential health hazards in your home and other frequent indoor environments can protect you from long-term health consequences. In other words, if it smells like mold, you can see it, and/or your body feels “off” in a particular environment and like something is making you sick, chances are that your body is right, and it is mold or something environmental. Thus, you have nothing to lose by taking steps to safeguard your health by investigating and fixing your environment as soon as something seems amiss.

So, let’s begin. Here is the question that sparked this post:

10:04 pm 0 comment

Cleaning Tips Mold Prevention Personal Stories Products Q & A's

Packing and Leaving a Moldy Home: What to Remediate, What to Discard, and How to Cope

by Catherine 12:23 am

When faced with leaving a toxic home, the idea of having to sort through your things before you embark upon your “new” life can be overwhelming. If you are also very sick, the tasks, even simple ones, can pile up, leading to anxiety, depression, and sometimes more illness.

I can definitely empathize. I lived this scenario. I was faced with leaving our home, all of our things, memories and personal items, even though I KNEW it was for the best. At that time, my husband was unwilling to concede. The mold just made me much sicker than it made him, so my body didn’t give me a choice. I took one bin of photos, scrapbooks and toiletries and our children and moved in with my sister for a few months.

My husband stayed behind and attempted to come to terms with what we were facing. Those were very hard times. I believe we both had to experience a grieving process before moving forward. Some of the emotional trauma that incurred still remains. I have made the choice for my sanity to move forward and live in the present and in thankfulness for my reclaimed health, rather than in the past dwelling on what I could have done differently.

If you are experiencing this, I am sure you have come up against conflicting advice in “expert” opinions about remediation, and what you can safely save and clean for mold and what you must discard. It felt “almost impossible” to know where to begin. For example, we all have many possessions that we love and have sentimental value, but we also don’t want to further risk our health by trying to save things that could make us sick or that could contaminate a new, safe environment.

The questions remain:

Who should you listen to?

Should you cut your losses no matter what or try to “clean” things for mold?

12:23 am 36 comments

Interviews Personal Stories Q & A's

Treating the Individual: A Naturopathic Doctor’s Approach to Healing Mold Patients

by Catherine 5:16 pm

One of the things that helps many mold patients during their recovery is connecting with and working with a naturopathic doctor. Luckily for my family, Dr. Dennis pulled us through, helping to identify the mold piece of the puzzle in our home and in our bodies. He also introduced us to protocols that ignited our healing and still continue to help us recover. Dr. Dennis guided phases of my detox, and the dietary- and nutritional supplement-side of things as well. We were very fortunate. But, for many other mold patients, medical doctors fail to see the environmental issues, and only treat immediate symptoms, leaving them still sick and increasingly frustrated. It is not until they try “alternative” therapies and visit naturopathic doctors and/or medical doctors who take an integrative approach to treatment that they finally are able to identify the cause of their illnesses.

In this way, naturopathic doctors are playing an integral part in how environmental illness is treated. They are on the front lines, tirelessly looking at the person, not just the symptom, to see what is happening in a patient’s diet, home, work and personal life to cause whatever illness is going on in the body. Naturopathic doctors help our understanding of how best to fine tune and prime our bodies to withstand environmental toxins. It is the naturopathic doctor’s unique knowledge of the body as a smart and complex system and view of a whole-body approach to healing that I want to shift my focus to today.

More specifically, I want to get a naturopathic doctor’s view of when something like mold becomes the tipping point, driving a major immune reaction, inflammation and illness. When our bodies scream at us that something is wrong, what should we do? What is the “whole body approach” to treating and healing from a mold exposure or mold-instigated illness?

To help answer this question, I was fortunate to be able to speak with Kimberly Williford, MS,RD/LD,NMD, a Board-Certified, licensed Naturopathic Doctor and Registered Dietitian and one of the founding partners of Southern Integrative and Environmental Medical (SIEM) located in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Williford treats environmental toxicity, metabolic dysfunction, hormonal imbalance, and chronic disease, with a focus on longevity and anti-aging. The practice offers comprehensive, individualized and integrative support for its patients.

5:16 pm 0 comment

Healthy Home Mold Prevention Q & A's

Indoor Vs. Outdoor Mold: Why Is Indoor Mold Problematic for Health?

by Catherine 4:29 pm

What is the difference between indoor and outdoor mold? Mold is everywhere outside and does not seem to make me sick, but I worked in a water-damaged building and became almost bedridden. Can you please help me to understand why indoor mold is so problematic to our health, but outdoor mold only seems to cause “seasonal allergies”?

That was the reader question I received last week. It is such a valid, complex and wonderful question that I wanted to answer it here on the blog, so that everyone can (hopefully) learn a little about mold from my answer.

Now, I am not a Certified Industrial Hygienist, an Environmental Health Scientist or a Building Biologist, so my answer to this reader is not “reference book material” or may not be completely scientifically accurate, so please be aware of that fact on the front end. My answer and knowledge of mold comes from my experience and my 20 books of handwritten notes from our mold ordeal with answers to this and many other questions in layman’s terms as I lived our nightmare and consulted some of best licensed professionals on mold, mold remediation, and health care professionals in the business at that time.

That being said, here is my reply:

4:29 pm 2 comments

Interviews Personal Stories Q & A's

Got Salt? Halotherapy for Environmental Illness

by Catherine 11:45 pm

Halotherapy, or dry salt therapy, has been consistently recommended to me as part of my ongoing wellness treatment for healing my body from exposure to toxic mold. Both my medical and holistic practitioners have touted the benefits of inhaling the salt vapors and of the salt’s negative ionization effect on the entire body.

(Note: The more negatively charged ions that are in the bloodstream, the more efficient a cell’s metabolic processes. Contrarily, the more positively charged ions, i.e., free radicals from computers, air pollutants, mold, processed foods, etc. there are in the blood, the slower and less efficient a cell’s ability to get rid of waste. An overabundance of free radicals or positively-charged ions causes cells to become weak; therefore, the body will get sick more easily and age faster.)

Because I have been so busy overhauling our home to make it safe for me and my family, I neglected searching for a place to experience halotherapy here in Memphis. Luckily, for me, as soon as things slowed down, I found the Salt Caves at Better Bodies Yoga Studio. When I reached out to the owner, Karen Moss, she was not only happy to have me come in to experience The Salt Caves, but was willing to answer any of my questions.

Now, I’m going to “take you with me” during my experience of halotherapy. I’m also going to let you in on my conversation with Karen, so that you can get an inside look into why dry salt therapy is so helpful for, not only people with upper respiratory issues, like asthma, sinusitis or allergies, but also for chronic inflammatory response syndrome, environmental illness and mold patients, like me. In other words, anyone interested in increasing immune function, resistance to disease, clearing unwanted particles from the respiratory tract, balancing nervous system function, or just in search of a healthy lifestyle can benefit from time spent inhaling the salt vapors.

Interested?

Let’s go.

11:45 pm 2 comments

Cleaning Tips Healthy Home Mold Prevention Products Q & A's

A Reader’s Own Cleaning for Mold Experiment

by Catherine 6:18 pm

I couldn’t resist sharing this with you guys!

The reader I have been corresponding with about treating “Dry Clean Only” clothing for mold recently wrote in with her own cleaning for mold experiment with a recently purchased designer vest. She wrote:

Hi, Catherine,

More good news! I couldn’t resist this article of clothing, and as the instructions said, “Machine Washable,” I slipped off the tag and treated it. I did not HEPA vacuum it. (Note: In my post, I HEPA vacuumed the “Dry Clean Only” pants I was experimenting with. HERE is that post, if you are interested.) I would like to find a HEPA vacuum that is very appropriate for delicate fabric, any suggestions? Instead, I washed the vest and put EC3 Mold Solution Concentrate in the wash and rinse cycle. I did not dry on high heat. I will wash it again, but found the one treatment made it acceptable. (See my photos below of the mold test plates for the results.)

Feel free to use it on your site if you like.
Kris Lawler, ND

6:18 pm 0 comment

Cleaning Tips Healthy Home Mold Prevention Q & A's

DIY Mold Removal For “Dry Clean-ONLY” Clothing

by Catherine 4:58 pm

Lately, I have been experimenting with techniques to remove mold and mold spores from “dry clean only” clothing items. These items of clothing are often the more expensive pieces—dress slacks, cocktail dresses, wool coats, blouses, suits, etc.—so, it is only natural that people are less willing to part with them, even when they have been exposed to mold. Now that I practice a form of mold avoidance, where I clean my home and my things regularly for mold to prevent exposure and maintain health, I needed a way to clean these clothing items without damaging them. I will say, though, that when my family went through getting out of the toxic home that made us all so sick, we basically threw out everything and started over. I did not want anything from that toxic home in my life anymore.

It has been my personal experience that when your body takes a prolonged hit, especially from a particularly toxic mold, like Stachybotrys chartarum, the “things” in your life that also took a hit can continue affecting your health, even when cleaned and even when in a clean environment. It is almost as if your threshold to that particular mold is non-existent. (Note: Toxic load is a known phenomena, either through a big exposure or a gradual one. There HERE is a chart that describes it.) In my experience, I just reacted immediately and on a large scale. Thus, it was not worth it to me to chance it. That being said, the clothing items I am talking about here are ones that are exposed to mold in everyday life, or during travel, or in the store before you even bring them home.

Just as I was getting into my research and experimentation, I got a serendipitous email from the same reader who wrote in about cleaning some chairs for mold a few months back. She is a naturopath by profession and knows a lot about mold illness, so she is obviously ahead of the curve when it comes to knowledge and awareness of environmental toxins. As you will see in her email, she recognizes her susceptibility to mold reactions, and lessens her exposure by thinking ahead and testing items before bringing them into her home.

4:58 pm 7 comments