Experts Estimate Nearly 50% of ALL U.S. Buildings are Contaminated by Mold
Let’s be honest, mold is far from headline news.
It’s not sexy or dramatic. It’s not going to get thousands of people to raise money. There is no “mold awareness month” campaign with black mold-colored ribbons.
And yet, it is a looming toxic crisis we are only just beginning to comprehend, once considered the domain of alternative medicine but now becoming mainstream.
Mycotoxins, the poisons produced by mold, slowly wear you down, sap your energy, destroy mitochondria, wreck performance, cloud your mind, and poison your immune system.
Millions of people are exposed every day. Most will never know and spend years and thousands of dollars chasing mystery symptoms.
And experts estimate that nearly 50% of ALL buildings in the US have some level of contamination.
However, with the right knowledge, you can heal and protect yourself.
But before we get there, let’s take a deeper look at what mold is and why it’s so harmful to our health.
Mold is an ancient lifeform.
It’s only slightly younger than it’s arch-enemy, bacteria. Over the course of billions of years, bacteria and mold have been engaged in advanced chemical warfare.
They have gotten extremely good at it, and as a result, mold creates some of the most toxic compounds on the planet.
Penicillin is perhaps the most famous product of this war of microorganisms –– this single mold-made antibiotic became the foundation of modern pharmaceutical medicine.
However, because we have a deep co-evolutionary history with bacteria, mycotoxins (the poisons produced by mold) affect much more than petri dishes and bacterial infections.
We humans are, in fact, powered by bacteria.
Not just the microflora in our gut (which are definitely important and also destroyed by mycotoxins), but inside every single one of our cells are dozens, if not thousands, of ancient bacteria.
We call them mitochondria.
They are the little energy factories of our cells.
The firing of neurons, the contracting of muscle, the healing of wounds… all of it depends on the energy produced by your mitochondria.
And what mold makes is the equivalent of kryptonite to mitochondria. Mold poisons your ability to make basic biochemical energy.
But it doesn’t stop there. Mold affects virtually everything in your body.
Mycotoxins damage DNA, leading to cancer [1,3-5].
They can rip apart the myelin sheath protecting your neurons [6], creating and exacerbating neurodegenerative disease [8]. They attack your immune system and deplete your antioxidant capacity [1,2], leaving you vulnerable to other stresses and disease.
Mycotoxins can cause birth defects or cause a pregnancy to abort.
They are toxic to your liver and kidneys and take at least 35 days to flush out [7].
But most importantly, they cause a breakdown in the membrane and electron transport chain in mitochondria that produce all your vital energy [8-10].
As you might expect, something that can affect your entire bioenergy production can have a huge range of symptoms that may manifest. Here is just a partial list of possible symptoms from mold toxicity:
The tricky thing with mold is that everyone has a different susceptibility. The symptoms of mold toxicity will look different for each person. This makes it incredibly difficult to diagnose, and it is far from a high priority for most doctors.
Fortunately, recovering from mold exposure is relatively simple, though it may take some time.
The first and most important step is to immediately remove yourself from the moldy environment.
Unfortunately, this is also often the most difficult step. If the moldy environment is your house or your workplace, removing the mold can be extraordinarily difficult. Especially because it can often hide in ventilation systems, between walls, or in other hidden places.
You can get a home mold test kit to see if you have mold in your home. For a more accurate diagnosis of the exact source and guidance on remediation, consult a mold-elimination professional.
The next step is to detox your body.
Mold exposure is a serious threat to your health. It can be misdiagnosed as Lyme disease, chronic fatigue, an autoimmune disease, a degenerative condition, anxiety or any number of possible “diagnoses” that can be misinterpreted and mistreated by a well-intentioned doctor.
If you know you have been exposed, take immediate action. Get yourself out of the environment and begin a detox protocol as soon as possible.
In the nearly 8 years that my wife and I have lived in Colorado Springs, never have we seen the amount of road construction currently taking place. Whether it’s a main road or side street, there’s no part of town missing out on the “fun”. And it’s not just re-paving or patching potholes. Whole lanes are being ripped up with miles of digging in order to replace underground pipes of all varieties.
At first, I thought all the “weed” sales (pot is legal in Colorado) might be producing the influx of tax funds for all this construction. But a running buddy of mine made me aware of a bill that had passed in the last couple years which freed up an enormous amount of funds for these projects.
Turns out the city has a certain amount of time to spend the money. Based on the number of orange cones and “ROAD WORK AHEAD” signs, it looks as though no penny is being spared.
Millions of people are about to be disappointed –– they don’t even realize it.
Maybe you’re one of them.
Right now, around the world, people are setting new ambitious health goals and resolutions.
And yet, according to Inc Magazine, approximately 80% of New Year's resolutions fail. Most of them buried in an unmarked early grave by February.
Why is that?
How is it that despite all our best intentions and genuine desire to live healthier and be fitter, the most we can hope for is a depressing 20% success rate?
So to help you kickstart your New Year with a healthy lifestyle we are going to breakdown why most goals and resolutions fail and what to do instead.
Collagen is just about everywhere.
Not just in your body, where collagen makes up roughly 25% of your total protein content, its also around you.
It’s in health food stores, grocery stores, in big plastic tubs at discount markets.
