Toxic Mold Illness with Dr. Jill Crista: Rational Wellness Podcast 272

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Dr. Jill Crista discusses Toxic Mold Illness with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

2:00 Dr. Crista started treating patients with Lyme in Wisconsin and she did the physician training in 2012 and she used naturopathic principles. Most of her patients were getting better except a small group and one of these patients they found toxic mold in his home. He couldn’t sleep, his gut was a mess, his joints were hurting, he had ear ringing and pelvic pain. At one of the ILADS conferences about Lyme she got some training in mold from Dr. Lisa Nagy and Dr. Crista for the last 10 years has been working with lots of patients with mold and she developed her own protocol. And then she and her family got hit with mold at their home. And then she realized she needed to write a book about mold illness.

5:32 When you have environmental illness, as we change our environment and our environmental practices, the illnesses tend to change as well. When Dr. Crista was practicing in Wisconsin, there were two lead mines an hour away, so a lot of her patients had lead toxicity. One thing that makes us more susceptible to mold illness is the common use of Roundup and glyphosate, as well as the pervasiveness of EMFs. Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, damages our microbiome and leads to secreting mycophenolic acid (MPA), which is extremely gut toxic. Mold makes mycotoxins to compete out other molds. Mycotoxins are made to harm another biological living thing, so it should not be surprising that mycotoxins can harm us. When mold remediation experts come to clean your house, they focus on removing spores and spore fragments but they don’t pay much attention to mycotoxins and to chemicals like MPA. Roundup is also sprayed on crops before harvesting as a desiccant, but this messes up the microbiome of the plant and increase the likelihood of this food becoming moldy in storage. We need to push to limit the use of RoundUp/glyphosate on crops.

11:35 We also construct homes super tight, which can keep moisture in, and we often use cheaper materials and we build right through rainstorms. Many building materials like concrete that once wet can take a long time to dry out. If you have construction going on with your house be there every day and make sure that they follow the building codes and not cut corners. If it does rain during construction, it is important that they cover up and then dry things out as quickly as possible, including any concrete, such as if there is a basement. In fact, finished basements are not a great idea, since even it it doesn’t rain, concrete can wick and soak up moisture.

14:18 Dr. Crista believes that exposure to mold makes fungus that already native to your body act pathogenically. We all have a certain amount of fungus, as well as bacteria that make up our microbiomes, and we have a microbiome in our large intestine, our sinuses, our mouth, our vagina, and all the mucus membranes in our body.

Dr. Crista: So what happens is that our normal … We have a microbiome for every part of our body, so the sinus microbiome-

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:14:44] everybody thinks about the large intestine, but the sinus, the vagina, all the mucus membranes.

Dr. Crista: Yep. And you would think this is really close to each other, a mouth and a nose. They have different little species that are in when they’re happily living, commensal. So I think of a microbiome as a commensal biofilm, because that’s kind of what it is. We have fungus, we have bacteria, we have viruses. We have things that are there to keep us in balance. When you start to breathe in the mycotoxins, they send a message, which is, “I am intending to harm you.” So you get that mycotoxin exposure to your sinuses, and then when you swallow down to your gut, to our mouths, that is a message that’s soaking in that is, on contact, harming our microbiome of the area. So the sinuses become a really, really important part of treatment and rebalancing, because that’s our first interface. But when they see their buddies getting attacked, they start to act defensively. So that changes from a commensal, sharing, collaborative environment to, hmm, I don’t know that we’re safe. I might need to start acting a little bit more in my own interest. And it’s very interesting to see that reflection in the human species right now as well. So then they have to start-

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:16:14] the fungus in the body, like the candida?

Dr. Crista: It’s fungus, but because it comes from a fungal source, then the body suspects the fungus as the problem, and the fungus becomes the scapegoat for the issue. So candida becomes a scapegoat, and then it overgrows. So this whole commensal microbiome starts to act defensively to defend from these mycotoxins, and the message in the mycotoxin is, I’ve come to kill. Fungus has come to kill and take over.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting.

Dr. Crista: And that’s my theory. And that’s what I base my treatment off of, but this was developed in my mind, because I was like, why am I having to use antifungals on people? When it’s a mold exposure, why does their body need antifungals? I get the toxin part, and I get-

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:17:09] is that the mold that’s growing inside my body? No, it’s the candida that was there already that’s now acting differently.

Dr. Crista: And then gone on long enough, if you have immune suppression, especially if you’re exposed to the living mold, those chemicals, then mold can move into your body, and we get something called colonization. So there’s sort of the spectrum that happens where you’re exposed to maybe the spores. That creates an allergic reaction. That’s going to spend a lot of your immune system. That’s going to increase mast cell migration. Then you have fragments. So you get this initial kind of inflammatory response. But then if it goes on, then you start to get the suppression of the chemicals that mold secretes and the mycotoxins. And that over time suppresses the immune system so then mold can move in, because now it can colonize you. And that can get severe enough to where they now want to invade. So it’s an invasive candidiasis. At that stage, we get mast cells again in droves, compared to the spore ones that are just local inflammatory reactions. Now we get mast cells that are in droves that go to the brain, the vagus nerve. Everything is affected, the immune system, skin, gut. And that’s when you start to see things like mast cell activation. For me, mast cell activation is a sign that the fungus is winning at invading and becoming an infection.

Dr. Jill Crista is a naturopathic doctor and the author of the best selling book, Break the Mold: 5 Tools to Conquer Mold and Take Back your Health. Through her popular physician training program she has trained over 600 doctors to become mold literate. Her website is Dr.Crista.com. Her mold training course for practitioners is Mold Training for Medical Practitioners.

Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure and also weight loss and also athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111. Dr. Weitz is also available for video or phone consultations.

Podcast Transcript

Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness podcast for weekly updates. And to learn more, check out my website, DrWeitz.com. Thanks for joining me, and let’s jump into the podcast.

Hello, Rational Wellness podcasters. Today, I’m excited to revisit mold illness topic again, since this is such an important issue for many patients. I’ve found the longer I practice, which is like 33 years now, I found that it increasingly affects more and more patients. I’m not sure if we’re just noticing it or if it’s more common. And so I’m excited to have Dr. Jill Crista join us today. She’s a naturopathic doctor and the author of the best selling book Break the Mold: Five Tools to Conquer Mold and Take Back Your Health. And Dr. Crista is widely recognized in the functional medicine world as one of the top mold illness experts, and she also has a very popular physician training program to become mold literate. So let’s see what we could do to become a little more mold literate in the next hour. Dr. Crista, thanks for joining us.

Dr. Crista: Thank you so much for the invitation. I’m so glad our schedules finally aligned.

Dr. Weitz: I know, I know. It’s so hard to coordinate sometimes. We’re all trying to cram in as much as we can.

Dr. Crista: Right.

Dr. Weitz: So we usually start with, how did you get interested in mold? And I don’t know. How do you want to start this? I know that you had some issues with mold and you’ve had patients with mold.

Dr. Crista: Yeah, I can make it very short. I started in the Lyme world. I found myself in Southern Wisconsin, and I knew a little bit about Lyme disease, but I knew that it was an East Coast thing. And here I am in Wisconsin saying, these people are doing all the naturopathic things. We have the hardest working patients ever. Functional medicine, naturopathic doctors, people come ready for homework, and they were doing all the things and not getting the responses that I was seeing with other patients. So there’s this little group of patients, and I thought, what in the world is going on? And then I started to learn about Lyme disease and how it’s bigger than Connecticut, and I got trained in that and did the physician training in 2012. So again, using naturopathic principles, when you find and treat the cause, people get better, except this small group of people that were doing all of the things and not getting better. And one of those patients, they found toxic black mold in his home, and that’s when it started. The Pandora’s box opened for me as I hit the research. I thought, “Oh, my gosh, mold is why this guy can’t sleep. His gut’s a mess. His joints are falling apart. He has ear ringing. He has pelvic pain. It was just like all of these things started to come together, and it was all animal research. And so here I was trying to translate with my training and comfort in nutrition and in herbs, translating animal research, and then put it into practice. And those Lyme patients started to get better. And that’s when I realized while mold is a big, big, big deal.

And finally at one of the ILADS conferences … It’s the Lyme organization that I’ve done my training with. They had a doctor, Dr. Lisa Nagy, I don’t know how to say her name correctly, but she’s one of my heroes. She got up and she was like, “Mold, mold, mold. This is mold. This is mold. We have to expand our thinking from Lyme to mold. And so I’ve just, in the last 10 years, just worked with patients with mold, developing my my own little protocol. And then mold hit us in our own home. It was hidden and got to me. And when the flood finally revealed itself … It was one of those slow drips that finally saturated, and then it was very evident we had a water damage problem. And I went, oh, this is mold. And I knew my favorite inspector, my favorite remediators. I had done lots of home visits with my patients because I wanted to learn. So I know enough about the building stuff to be dangerous. And then I knew what to do for protocol and get my family and our pet and everybody going on mold treatment. And that’s when I was like, I need to write a book.

Dr. Weitz: You talk about the chronic patients who don’t get better, and at the same time, I have a number of patients who are suffering with mold illness. And I know it’s a real deal, but part of me in the back of my head is saying, is this just the latest illness that explains chronic disease? And over the years, we’ve gone through one illness de jour after the other. And one time everybody had adrenal problems, and then everybody had thyroid, and then everybody had parasites, and then everybody had candida, and everybody has Lyme and everybody has mold. Part of me wonders, is there a bit of that too? This is the latest train to jump onto.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. And I think that’s a normal thing when you have environmental illnesses, what you were just going through. Now everyone has adrenal fatigue. Well, we also went to where we lit up the sky all night long. So then people had sleep problems, which presented as adrenal fatigue. So I think as we change our environment, we have epidemic or pandemic low lying environmental expressions that highlight a practice that we’re doing that isn’t good for us. When I first moved to Southern Wisconsin, I had two lead mines an hour away, two different ways. A lot of my patients had lead toxicity.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, wow.

Dr. Crista: So it’s just one of those things. It can be regional, but it also can be our environmental practices. I think that mold is coming to the fore because of how we’re building our buildings and because we have a double whammy critter or chemical of Roundup and glyphosate. So that sets the stage for people to be very mold susceptible, and now we’ve added EMF into it. So now we have all of these things that are sort of … It’s making mold come to the fore. It’s not necessarily a trend, although it is getting a little trendy I noticed. And that’s kind of a funny thing.

Dr. Weitz: Well, how does glyphosate make people more susceptible to mold illness?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. So glyphosate is horrible on our microbiome, and so too is mold. So the mold makes these mycotoxins. It also makes chemicals as part of its normal metabolism. There’s something called MPA or mycophenolic acid. When we see that on a lab, we know that someone’s being actively exposed to growing happily living metabolizing mold. That chemical is extremely gut toxic. We actually use it, and it’s immune toxic. So we use that chemical in medicine. It’s a drug called CellCept for people who’ve had organ transplants so that they don’t reject the organ. We impair the immune system so they don’t see it as a foreign body. And you could be getting that just by breathing moldy air. So we have MPA that’s happily [inaudible 00:07:37]

Dr. Weitz: Is that the primary way in which mold suppresses the immune system?

Dr. Crista: That’s one of the ways, if you’re exposed to actively living mold. And then if you have old mold that was living and was in a wet … Or I don’t want to say wet. I want to say moist because people think it has to be a flood. It can be just moist air. Florida is a very moldy state. Whether you’ve had water damage or not, you’re not managing your indoor humidity, mold is going to grow. So if you have a current or past mold problem where there’s enough moisture that many molds want to live there, then they start competing and they start making mycotoxins to compete out the other mold. Those mycotoxins are made with the intention of harming another biological living thing. And so we of course are impacted by that.

Dr. Weitz: Let me stop you for a second. So the mycotoxins … I heard you say this in one of your interviews … are secreted by mold to fight off other molds, which might try to cram into their territory.

Dr. Crista: That’s right. They’re made in a competitive environment with the intention of creating death to another living thing. For me, that’s a big deal, and in a lot of the remediation world, they’re still not really looking at mycotoxins. They’re still very focused on particulate. This is spores and spore fragments. The other thing is mycotoxins and these chemicals like MPA that’s so immune toxic. It’s also gut toxic, but it’s extremely immune toxic. Then you add mycotoxins, which are toxic to, you name it, every system in the body, glyphosate messing up the … And that’s Roundup for those that don’t know yet. That will change the microbiome.

Dr. Weitz: Which is an herbicide, which is sprayed on the majority of wheat and corn and soy in this country, basically. It’s not organic it’s. If it’s genetically modified, it’s often genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. And even if it’s not genetically modified, they still use the Roundup as a desiccant just before they harvest. So two weeks before harvesting, they load it with this to dry it all up so that they can harvest it more easily and get it into storage. That also sets the stage for that food becoming moldy in storage, because it’s just messed up the microbiome of the plant as well. So we have a lot of reasons why mold is becoming a problem. And there are a lot of things that we could do in changing policy and changing how we do things that can make mold not be a problem. This is a very preventable problem.

Dr. Weitz: So we’ve got to try to push, if it’s possible, to limit the use of glyphosate on crops.

Dr. Crista: Absolutely, a hundred percent agree. That’s one of the biggest features in my upcoming book on PANDAS and PANS. Glyphosate is the number one environmental bad guy for that condition.

Dr. Weitz: Wow. I see people around my neighborhood now that everybody’s trying to have a grass free lawn. They want to make sure the grass doesn’t come up. And one of my neighbors, I just saw him walking around on what used to be his grass yard, spraying Roundup to make sure the grass doesn’t pop up. And he’s walking across the gravel and stuff, and then of course he’s tracking it into his house.

Dr. Crista: It’s kind of like the fable of bringing in the cats to eat the mouse problem, and then you end up with the elephants. This is where we are, and we could be growing sustainable, native plants that we normally associate as weeds. So I think policy change all around, and it’s going to have to be a little bit different for every region. There are some things that have made mold a big problem globally.

Dr. Weitz: What other things?

Dr. Crista: Well, just growing food. We make uber tight houses. We use cheaper materials now, and we build right through a rainstorm. We just had a massive rainstorm in my neighborhood, and I wanted to get my umbrella and get out there and just take a picture of this. The house is all closed up on the sides and no roof yet, because they didn’t get to that, and it’s just pouring rain down into that. And their basement is just filling up with water. We don’t allow … A cement slab can soak up water that will take 30 years to get rid of. [inaudible 00:12:11]

Dr. Weitz: Is that right?

Dr. Crista: Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: Wow.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. So the fact that like they vacuum it up with a shop vac and call it good and then close up the house- that’s not going to necessarily

Dr. Weitz: Wow.

Dr. Crista: … that’s not going to necessarily [inaudible 00:12:26]

Dr. Weitz: … projects, and they maybe cover a few walls with plastic. It rains, and then they just continue.

Dr. Crista: Yep. And there’s another one in my neighborhood, not a great builder. They have a bad reputation in my area. They did put all of the moisture barrier on the outside. And then because of the supply chain issue, it took a long time for the siding to get there. And a lot of that moisture barrier just ripped off in a windstorm, and they just went ahead and put the siding up. They didn’t reapply the moisture barrier. And I was just like, oh my gosh, they’re going to be so sick in that house because now there’s no … They did do due diligence, but I was taking a walk, and I was watching them just put the siding back on. So I think if you are in a place where you’re building your own home, be there every day, and be that irritating client and make sure things are done right. Even normal building code needs to be followed.

Dr. Weitz: Well, what do you do if they’re in the middle of doing a remodel or something and it does rain? What can you do then?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. Well, and I think that the idea is dry it out and dry it out as quickly as possible. And I am not a building expert. I’m just going to be really clear. I know enough to be dangerous, like I said. But I’ve done this a while, and I am one of those people that loves to go do the home visit so I can learn more. But I think dehumidification is a key part of managing a healthy home.

Dr. Weitz: But I don’t think anybody thinks about drying out the concrete.

Dr. Crista: Don’t cover up concrete. I mean, that’s the idea, especially if you have a basement. Finished basements are a no-no. They just are. Even if you don’t have wet concrete, it will wick. The best way, in a survival situation, to find water is to dig a hole, because water will fill in. Why are we finishing basements? I don’t understand.

Dr. Weitz: I heard you say that exposure to mold makes fungus that’s already native to your body act pathogenically.

Dr. Crista: Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: That’s fascinating.

Dr. Crista: [inaudible 00:14:33] isn’t it? It’s super fascinating.

Dr. Weitz: Explain what you mean by that exactly.

Dr. Crista: So what happens is that our normal … We have a microbiome for every part of our body, so the sinus microbiome-

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:14:44] everybody thinks about the large intestine, but the sinus, the vagina, all the mucus membranes.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:16:14] the fungus in the body, like the candida?

Dr. Weitz: Interesting.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:17:09] is that the mold that’s growing inside my body? No, it’s the candida that was there already that’s now acting differently.

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Dr. Weitz: So if mold takes up root, say, in your gut, would a stool test pick it up?

Dr. Crista: Not necessarily. [inaudible 00:20:02]

Dr. Weitz: Mold is not candida, right?

Dr. Crista: Mold is different than candida. Mold is not a yeast. However, by having mold exposure and enough of the chemicals in the mycotoxins, now you can get suppression of the gut. We do see … On some biopsies, you can see aspergillus and things like that in a gut.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:20:24]

Dr. Crista: More in the lungs. The lungs are more hospitable, if you want to call it that, easier to infect, the lungs, for aspergillus, than the gut because of our stomach acid. But if you’re on an acid blocker [inaudible 00:20:35]

Dr. Weitz: Interesting. We do see a lot of the mold patients have increased likelihood of candida overgrowth, of parasites, of bacterial overgrowth.

Dr. Crista: When you’re in a water damaged building exposure where it’s enough that you are getting mycotoxins, you’re usually also getting endotoxins, because a water damaged building hosts mixed microbes, and they even have quorom sensing within that water damaged building. It’s really fascinating.

Dr. Weitz: And then it’s hard to know which is causing the symptoms. Or are they all contributing? And then do we treat them all at the same time? Do we try to treat one and then the other?

Dr. Crista: Right. So because of that, think of it as a microbiome disruption, which is not just bacteria. And that’s why [inaudible 00:21:29]

Dr. Weitz: Which we often referred to as dysbiosis.

Dr. Crista: Right, yeah. And that probably has some fungus, even in a person who is bacterially effected. Let’s say someone takes an antibiotic and they have dysbiosis after that. Well, think about what an antibiotic is. It’s a mycotoxin. So penicillin is the mycotoxin from penicillium species mold.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Dr. Crista: So we can kind of understand what colonization might look like. Just look at somebody who’s taken antibiotics and then they have a candida infection. It’s like, how did that happen? So [inaudible 00:22:05]

Dr. Weitz: I just saw a study published on that last month, about how patients who take antibiotics are increased risk of actually dying from candida overgrowth.

Dr. Crista: Oh, wow. So repopulation of the bacteria helps reestablish that, but also there’s a reason why, in a short term antibiotic situation, there’s a reason why using Saccharomyces is also beneficial, because it also addresses that fungal piece. But in a mold sick person, I’m very careful with Saccharomyces boulardii because that, for my patient base, just creates sugar cravings. It just gives them more fungal burden, and they’re already fungally burdened. So then I’ll use more a spore based probiotic. So your question about which one do we target, all of them, because it’s going to be a mixed microbe mess.

Dr. Weitz: Right.

Dr. Crista: And it was actually Dr. Brewer’s study in 2013 or ’14. When I read that study, that’s when it was just like, oh, I get it now. This is colonization, and we must be treating the sinuses because they’re seeding the whole problem. And that study was where they looked at people with chronic fatigue syndrome that had a known water damaged building exposure, and then healthy controls. And what they did is they sampled sinuses. They sampled lung tissue, gut tissue. I think they even sampled brain. And they found that everybody has fungus in their sinuses. Everybody has fungus in their gut. So that wasn’t the big a-ha. The big reveal was sick people had mycotoxins in their nasal washings and their gut washings and their lung washings. Healthy people did not. So that’s when I was like, oh my gosh, something shifts in the microbiome of the human because it’s not the presence of this species.

Dr. Weitz: We need a nasal microbiome, a nasal mycotoxin test.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. That would be cool. What a good idea. Oh my gosh. We’re swabbing everybody anyway [inaudible 00:24:08]

Dr. Weitz: So how often do you treat the nasal cavity in mold patients? Is it just when patients have nasal sinus type symptoms, or are you treating everybody, their nasal cavity?

Dr. Crista: Everybody. And it may be a probiotic. It may be the Latilactobacillus sakei that helps to rebalance. So it might just be [inaudible 00:24:32]

Dr. Weitz: And you’re talking about putting that into the nose, right?

Dr. Crista: Into the nose, yeah. Because again, as a reversal of exposure, if the gut’s a mess, obviously you need to treat that, but you also have to stop seeding the gut by treating the nose. And so I will do nasal treatment of some form, whether it’s probiotics or [inaudible 00:24:53] acid, which are more rebalancing, if it’s a healthier person that doesn’t really have a lot of sinus symptoms, all the way to the pharmaceuticals, if they have significant sinus symptoms, because they have a massive biofilm there.

Dr. Weitz: So will you use pharmaceuticals in the nasal cavity?

Dr. Crista: Mm-hmm, if needed.

Dr. Weitz: Which ones?

Dr. Crista: So we can use … That’s where a gut test is kind of nice because if we also see other species like Klebsiella in the gut, then I know they need tobramycin in the nose. So there are some species that we know that we … Klebsiella and Pseudomonas seem to be kind of pond scum of biofilm. They are very hard to get rid of sometimes. So if I’ve used herbals and I’m not seeing what I need to see … And then there’s [inaudible 00:25:42] spray. A lot of people aren’t doing the gentamicin part. They’re just doing [inaudible 00:25:45] spray. So there are just lots of different … Dr. Brewer actually revolutionized this for me as well by using nystatin. He said that he was getting much better results with less adverse events by using nystatin. So I think, about five years, we’ve done that when needed as well.

Dr. Weitz: Nystatin in the nose?

Dr. Crista: Intranasally. And that’s all through a compounded pharmacist.

Dr. Weitz: I see, interesting. What about the silver intranasally?

Dr. Crista: Sure. Yep. And silver I use in conjunction with antifungal essential oils or an antifungal mix. There are lots of wonderful mixes out there already done for you. I actually have a handout if anyone wants to email my assistant, because you’ll get it faster, at support@DrCrista.com. I have something called nasal options for mold. And I’m going to do a quick video on that because I think that really would help people know what all is out there. So you can use things like tea tree. There are are premixes with tea tree, and that addresses the antifungal part. And then at another time of the day we can use silver, and that will help address the bacterial parts such as MARCONS and MRSA. A lot of these people have MRSA.

Dr. Weitz: Cool. So we didn’t go over the symptoms of mold illness, but there’s so many symptoms, right?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. I mean, I’m not Shoemaker trained, but Dr. Shoemaker is well known for saying that this is a multisystem, multi symptom condition. It looks a lot like Lyme disease. I remember having a conversation with Dr. Horowitz, and I said, “What if we created a questionnaire for mold that would help diagnose it?” And he said, “It’ll look just like the Lyme one. So I was like, “Okay, that’s a challenge.” So I tried to use his MSIDS Lyme questionnaire as a basis. And I created a questionnaire so that people could get a score. And they’re in three different categories for commonness to uncommon or selected more toward mold. And each one is weighted a little different of the three categories. So that questionnaire’s on my website if anybody wants to grab it. It’s in my book. And I honed it with all of the patients, like, does your score of saying not mold, probable mold, possible mold, does that match what I know of your mold testing? And so we’re working to scientifically validate that. We’re putting together [inaudible 00:28:10]

Dr. Weitz: That that would be great.

Dr. Crista: And then people can just take the questionnaire, because there are so many. But in practice I use that questionnaire also as a tracker, because people will forget how sick they were as you get them better. And so every three months or so or anytime we’re retesting mycotoxins, I have them fill out the questionnaire. And then when I see them again, I’m like, “How are you doing?” They’re like, “Oh, I’m just not any better. Can I get off this nasal stuff?” all kinds of [inaudible 00:28:38] “Can we start busting biofilm? I’m getting antsy,” all the things. And then I say, “Let’s look back at the first one,” and people will actually say, “Oh, that’s right. I couldn’t leave the house until 10:00 AM because I never knew what my gut was going to do. Or I had migraines. I kind of forgot I had migraines. I’m like, how do people forget they had migraines? But they do. I mean, you forget how sick you were.

Dr. Weitz: Any time patients are dealing with chronic symptoms, chronic pain, they tend to wait for the point at which they’re not going to have any pain. And as long as they still have pain, sometimes they think, oh, this is not working. I still have pain. So that’s where you need questionnaires. You need pain scales. You need things like that so you can quantify it so you know that seven or eight pain is now a three or four. So even though it’s still there, you show an improvement, and you’re going in the right direction.

Dr. Crista: And stay the course. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s like, we’re not trying to discount that you’re still in pain or that you’re still having symptoms. But the answer is what you’re doing is working. So stay the course and there will be that time because our body has an amazing innate healing ability. We will get there.

Dr. Weitz: Can patients who consume mold in their food get similar symptoms to those exposed to environmental mold?

Dr. Crista: Similar, typically not as severe. In the US, [inaudible 00:30:03] Westernized kind of cultures, also I would say South America where they’re using the same kind of farm practices and that kind of thing. However, there are areas of the world where they are storing grain, peanuts, soy, where they have a big problem with their food source. So that can happen. And you’re going to see things that are more linked to immune deficiency and kidney, the organs of detoxification. So we see liver cancer, kidney cancer, autoimmune diseases, that kind of thing. In a typical US, there have been review studies of the studies of food that is typically going into the US market. Eating a normal standard American diet, which already is not a great diet, it definitely can cause illness. But just eating that amount of ochratoxin, in my experience, doesn’t create the degree of illness that I see with a water damaged building exposure. However, if you know you have water damaged building exposure, getting rid of those mycotoxin laden in foods really speeds your healing process. So is it good for us to eat mycotoxins? But are we and have we evolved doing that for eons? Yeah, we have. We’re a little tiny bit mycotoxin obligate, I think. We’ve developed some detox to handle a tiny bit.

Dr. Weitz: How accurate is urinary mycotoxin testing? And what is it telling us? Because it’s telling us that they’re screening mycotoxins, which obviously it’s better if they’re not having any mycotoxins. But if there are mycotoxins, we’d certainly rather have them excrete it then have them just sit there.

Dr. Crista: Right. This is a question that I take 45 minutes in my doctor course to answer. I’ve done many, many, many split sample testings. I have identical twins myself, and I have a very good friend with identical twins. And they actually didn’t have mold. So I was able to test healthy, identical twins, and then they did have a mold problem. It was almost like we called it in, and I always feel bad about that. So when my kids and I were living in our moldy building, I did a lot of split sample testing to compare what I was doing with each one or what each one was willing to take, to be more honest.

So I had this very unique genetically identical, same exposure, same diet situation. So I learned a lot in that process of, what are the strengths, and what are the weaknesses? Because every lab test is going to have that. And I love your question, what is it telling us? When people ask me, should we provoke or shouldn’t we provoke? Which test do you like? And I always say, that’s the wrong question. Which test is best to answer the question you’re trying to answer for the patient in front of you? Because that’s going to be different. That might mean serum antibody testing for mycotoxins, not just for molds spores. There’s My Myco Lab. They have an antibody test for mycotoxins. The things you run through Quest and Labcorps, that’s just mold spores. So that’s not going to tell you anything about the mycotoxins. That is one of the few tests on the market, the IgE, that helps to answer the question, am I being exposed right now?

Dr. Weitz: And what is the name of a company that offers that test?

Dr. Crista: My Myco Lab. And all of these labs, because they’re not [inaudible 00:33:33]

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:33:33] not covered by insurance, right?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. We’re not able to use the resources, the insurance resources. So that’s why I want to develop a questionnaire for the people who can’t afford, but still need to know if it’s mold. So My Myco Lab test, IgG and IgE do a number of different mycotoxins. The IgE tells me that they’re being exposed to a significant degree to affect their immune system, to tweak their immune system, basically, in the last two weeks. And Dr. Campbell who’s the medical director for that lab, he said, “We can even stretch that to a four week period when it comes to toxin based illnesses.” But I don’t know the science on that. So I’m using the rules of antibodies and infection because it really doesn’t matter, two weeks to four weeks. If I have a patient that’s in their safe home or in their current home and saying, “Is this mold?” and we see a positive IgE, I’m like, “You’ve got to get out of there.” And then we can test them when they’re out, challenge them when they come back, and that answers the question.

Urine mycotoxin testing doesn’t answer that question as well, but it does tell us what they’re treating, like you said. It can also tell us that they can’t excrete very well, and that’s informative as well. So you have somebody who knows they’re exposed to mold, does a urine mycotoxin test, and we see nothing or little to nothing. We have a very toxic person, and in my experience, a very high risk for developing dementia, bone marrow related issues, cancer. And I don’t mean to scare people, but that to me is an alarm. That isn’t like, oh, this test sucks. To me, it’s like, that’s telling us some information. And then also to provoke or not to provoke is always the question, and that’s different for each method. There are two different methods used for urine mycotoxin testing. One is ELISA, which is an antibody based test.

And the other is mass spect, so liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry. That one is an actual direct test. In other words, they look at the urine, and if they see a particular molecule, then they say, “Yep, it’s here.” Whereas the ELISA based urine is asking a little bit of the antigenic side, a little bit of the immune side. So each one has their positives and negatives for what you’re trying to answer. If you have a patient with kidney issues, then you’re going to want to choose a certain one so that you’re maximizing the strengths of that test. So there’s all these things. If you have a person with immune issues and you’ve tested their immunoglobulins and they’re low, then the serum one probably isn’t the best test for you. Then you need the urine one. So they’re all needed and necessary and to be used for the patient in front of you to answer the question you’re trying to answer.

Dr. Weitz: Now I’ve talked to some of the labs like Great Plains, and they highly recommend not challenging with glutathione because that they said that could decrease the amount of mycotoxins that you see secreted.

Dr. Crista: That was based on my testing.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, really?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. I shared that data and presented it for them. And ever since then, they’ve been saying don’t provoke. Because I had identical twins, two sets, and I had had another set of twins that weren’t identical, but that we did split sample testing on. And my child who was taking glutathione but was sickest and had the worst exposure in his bedroom, his mycotoxins were … A number of them were lower, and one was a little bit higher than his twin brother who was in the next bedroom who was not taking glutathione. So I think I would love to see the labs take some of their income and do some of this testing, because I’m not questioning their technique. I’m questioning, what do we do with the patient before we send the sample in? I think that’s the big unknown. And if anyone says you provoke this way with this lab, and this is the way to do it, we just don’t have the data. We can’t be that strict and religious about it.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:37:42] really need more science about this because it wasn’t too long ago, maybe 15, 20 years ago that labs were shut down for even testing for mold toxins.

Dr. Crista: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that was more political than-

Dr. Weitz: Well, of course it is. But it also shows you how long it takes for the conventional medical world to accept new ideas.

Dr. Crista: That’s right. And in defense of science, mycotoxins … I get medical doctors who want to take my course, and then they say, how many randomized clinical trials do you have in your resources? And I say this many. Do you know why? Because of medical ethics. We can’t poison people with known toxins and poisons to figure out what gets them better. The number one treatment of toxin based illnesses is avoidance, is don’t [inaudible 00:38:37]

Dr. Weitz: You can ask them, how many randomized clinical trials do they have for surgical procedures?

Dr. Crista: Sure, right. The sham knee surgery and [inaudible 00:38:48]

Dr. Weitz: … surgery, right?

Dr. Crista: So in defense of that, I understand why there’s resistance, because our standard of how we assess conditions and treatments doesn’t fit for toxin based illnesses. So we’re left to do translational research to animals. And again, let’s change policy so that this isn’t even a problem. We’re manifesting this problem.

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Dr. Weitz: So let’s get into some of the treatments. In your format, you break down the treatment into different categories or phases, and you have avoidance, fundamentals, and protect, and then you have repair, and then finally fight. So can we just start with the protect phase? And one of the treatments that everybody knows about is binders. So I have questions about binders. The binders that you list are things like flax seeds and chia seeds. I’m used to seeing recommendations for clay and charcoal and zeolite and modified citrus pectin and things like that. So I’m wondering why you aren’t recommending binders like that. And then also, is there any reason to think that specific binders can be a benefit to different types of mycotoxins or different types of mold?

Dr. Crista: Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, we could talk for hours on this one. So the binder story. First, we have to understand [inaudible 00:41:59]

Dr. Weitz: The binder story.

Dr. Crista: What are we binding? So what we’re binding, in a water damaged building exposure where you’re breathing it or you’re taking it through your skin, is we are binding bile. So the path of the mycotoxin is you breathe it in. It goes into the lungs, or it can seep in through your nasal tissue. It can seep in through your skin. These are lipophilic, meaning they can go through fat. They don’t have to have a protein doorway, no toll-like receptors, no nothing. They’re fat soluble. They can just, blip, right through the cell membrane. They can get into the bloodstream, which is why we can test it on urine, because then when it’s in the bloodstream, it takes one of two paths, to the kidneys to get peed out and detoxed, which works for all except ochratoxin. Ochratoxin doesn’t work like that. Or we can have the liver package it up in bile, send it to the colon and to be pooped out.

The problem is bile is really kind of designed more as a preservation of our fat soluble nutrients and as a detergent. So it’s supposed to get some of our stuff out, but we recycle about 93% of our bile. So if you think about that, we’re recycling that toxin. We bring it back up to the liver, and the liver’s like, I already handled this. So it has to re-detoxify the mycotoxin it just packaged up and sent in bile and then sent down to the intestines to be pooped out. So that can happen. I call it the detox insanity, the definition of detox insanity, is the bile is like, here it is again, here it is again, here it is again.

So what we’re trying to do is grab bile. And one of the best ways to grab bile is all the things that also grab cholesterol. And we have great studies on this for people who have bile dump diarrhea syndromes, who are missing their gallbladder. By the way, you make bile from your liver. So if you’re missing your gallbladder, you can still get better from mold. So I get that question a lot. They’re like, oh no, I don’t have a gallbladder. People without a gallbladder tend to do better, actually, with this condition, which is very fascinating. So we’re grabbing that bile with things that grab bile and cholesterol, because bile is made up of cholesterol and phosphatidylcholine. So we look at the studies of how to grab bile from these bile dump diarrhea syndromes or how to lower cholesterol very, very efficiently is insoluble fiber. So when we think about what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to grab bile with things that have been proven in other studies in other conditions in randomized human clinical trials that answer the same or get to the same end as grabbing bile and cholesterol. Does that make sense?

Dr. Weitz: Yeah. But I’ve heard from people who are very knowledgeable about the biochemistry of this that things like flax seeds are just not going to work, that you need charcoal, clay, zeolite, that there’s some specific way in which those work much better.

Dr. Crista: Right. And we learned that from animal studies. So when you’re eating mold … So in animal studies, they know they’re going to be feeding animals moldy feed, which let’s start with one policy change. Let’s not do that. What they do is they feed the animals moldy feed on purpose, and then they add different things to the food to see what minimizes that animal’s burden of mycotoxins. So a big part for me of the whole binder story is bowel movement and motility. So using insoluble fiber doesn’t work if somebody is really constipated. Using any binder doesn’t work, because it’s an absorption. It’s like two magnets. It’s not like Velcro. So if they’re constipated, that can denature right off of that bile, and now you have a mycotoxin problem in the gut. And a lot of times you have a mycotoxin problem in the gut anyway from the colonization. And that’s where the work, sorry, of Dr. Nathan, who I work with a lot and Beth O’Hara and Emily [inaudible 00:45:53]. I think that they kind of got together on, how do we detox each mycotoxin? What binds each mycotoxin? And that’s based on animal research, and those are all real, yes, effective things. They also bind a lot of nutrients. And do I use them? Yes. But I use them very selectively, and I use them in short term. And that again is from animal-

Dr. Weitz: They have to be taken away from food and other supplements, et cetera.

Dr. Crista: So I’ll use charcoal more commonly than the others. I like to just use the good cheap $5 activated charcoal, whole bottle. It doesn’t cost you much money, and it’s very effective. That one you can use a little longer term in my experience without affecting the nutrient ability, but using any binder, like a pharmaceutical one, Dr. Shoemaker uses [inaudible 00:46:44] things like that because it binds bile, because it binds cholesterol. It’s the same thing as the insoluble fiber. In my experience, that also is binding vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, CoQ10, essential fats. These are all things that you need to protect your nervous system. So that’s part of the protect section also is DHA because we have to get … If this is a fat soluble, oil soluble toxin, we have to also provide the things that are going to be replacing that lipid or that oil.

So if they’re constipated, I don’t use any binders. I use pre-binders. I get the motility going, because if you’re not pooping, that’s the lowest part of that detox cycle. We’re just going to be doing detox insanity if you’re not going to the bathroom. So that’s the first thing we do is pre binders are things that make and move bile, and that’s going to be things that taste bitter. And then there are certain plants, herbs that can do that. So if they’re not going to the bathroom two times a day, we don’t even talk about binding because we’re just going to force recycling of those toxins. So, yes, I do use charcoal. I like Takesumi Supreme. It’s carbonized bamboo. If I know either they’re going to be really exposed, they have to go meet their insurance person at their water damaged building or something like that and they’re going to be totally blasted after, or I do it just before we’re about to do the antifungals because that’s a predictable time to get a lot of spillage and mycotoxins. But I don’t use them over long periods of time because, in my experience with my patient base, insoluble fiber, you have to go high, go two grams, three grams does a very efficient job of not only binding, but also feeding the microbiome and assisting the detoxification process, preserving our fat soluble nutrients, all the things.

I’m very careful with clay and zeolite. Zeolite is clay. First of all, they can be very lead laden. They can be contaminated with lead. So using specific medical grade clay is very important, but in animal studies and the farmers in my area, if they put young people on clay or young kids, so goats and dairy cattle and things on clay, they’ll have dental problems and bone growth problems. So I think it’s a little too aggressive of an absorber. So they also will see in dairy cattle, if you’re on clay too long, they’ll stop producing milk. So I’m very careful and selective about how I use clay. It’s kind of a perks recovery, not a daily thing. And I’m very different than … I know that I work with Neil Nathan in a mentorship, and it’s so much fun because we all do it a little bit differently, like you said in the beginning. And we’ve come to realize this because we all uniquely, as practitioners, attract people that align with us. So we’re all seeing a different patient base. And it’s also because we don’t have randomized clinical controlled trials. We’re not collecting the data on treatment, which we’re working on, so that there isn’t standardized care with this. Because everybody’s an individual, and they’re affected by mold differently.

Dr. Weitz: So in order to move the bowels, are you using things like … What kinds of things are you using for moving the bowels? Are you using magnesium? Are you using ginger and artichoke? What sorts of things?

Dr. Crista: Good question. So for mold, we’re trying to move it at the small bowel. So things like laxatives, they may help, but they’re going to wear out. So this is a classic picture of a mold sick person, that they have been constipated for a long time. They finally discover that the … And it’s usually many legs of a stool that gets someone to go to the bathroom. They start with magnesium, and that works, and then it starts to not work. So then they add high dose vitamin C to get a bowel flush, and that works, so magnesium, vitamin C. And then that starts to not work. So then they add senna, and that starts to work. Now they’ve got magnesium, vitamin C, senna, and then that starts to not work. And so they add stool softeners, and then they add bile salts. And so, finally, they’re moving up the tube to where the problem is, and the problem is in the trigger to make stomach acid and bile.

So if I have somebody who’s on all of those things, now we know we’ve ruled those out. I don’t have them take away those things. We add then things that go higher up the tube, like a stomach acid, [inaudible 00:51:12], bile salts, and then the cholagogues and [inaudible 00:51:16], which are very bitter, like [inaudible 00:51:20]. Typically, if they’ve been constipated a long time, bitters alone aren’t going to do it. They’re going to need some bile. [inaudible 00:51:27] bitter orange, all the things that … And when you taste bitter on the tongue … I could go on about bitters forever. 50% of the drugs on the market target the bitter taste receptor. And you could be getting that benefit just by putting bitter on your tongue before you eat.

Dr. Weitz: So putting it on the tongue more so than just ingesting it is going to be more [inaudible 00:51:50]

Dr. Crista: Yep, exactly. You have to engage those better taste receptors. And if anyone’s listening who’s a practitioner, go look at [inaudible 00:51:58] and these taste receptors. It’s fantastic and amazing what they’re doing for the body. So you have to taste it. And so if somebody is like, oh, I just can’t, I can’t do it. I need a capsule. I’m doing this liquid thing, or I’m traveling. I can’t do liquid. So then I have them just take one of the capsules of a bitters formula and dump it into the bottle and then shake up the bottle because then there’ll be a little bit. And all we need is a tiny bit to get going.

Dr. Weitz: So better to use something that you drop in your mouth or a spray or something like that for the bitters.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. Always better to taste it. And that could be, Angostura bitters from liquor store. It doesn’t have to be inaccessible, like woo-woo. I mean, there’s a reason why liver toxic people trend toward drinking Manhattans. It’s very fascinating to me. I love to ask people, what’s your favorite cocktail? It tells me a lot

Dr. Weitz: Interesting. And so we’re running out of time, and I only have about 3,000 more questions. But I know that you use glutathione in part of your protocol. That’s in your fight phase. Is that right? Or where is it?

Dr. Crista: No, no. Glutathione is going to be in the repair because it’s [inaudible 00:53:27] repair the detoxification systems. And some people can’t do glutathione. I mean, really, I just proceed cautiously with that, and we’ve done the avoidance, the fundamentals, kind of set the stage so the body could handle glutathione. And in the protect phase, we’ve done things to help the body handle the more mycotoxins that are going to be coming out. Because once you start poking the bear with mold, once you start going to the fight phase … That’s why it’s the last phase for me. I learned by making my patients sicker, like, oh, this is mold. This is fungus. Here’s this candida formula. And ear ringing goes through the roof. I had one Lyme mold patient that went into seizure by giving her an antifungal pharmaceutical. So I was like, oops, this needs to be the last thing that we do.

Dr. Weitz: So you do things like … You’ve got milk thistle and other nutrients to help support the liver.

Dr. Crista: And milk thistle makes our own innate glutathione. So if somebody can’t handle glutathione … I kind of tiptoe into the glutathione with the dosing because some people it’s just too much. Detox is too much. And all of these things are just temporary. Even the diet is part of a therapeutic diet to get someone rehabbed, because it can happen. You can get better from mold. So things like milk thistle, turmeric get the body ready. And then you can go for the more nutrient focused alpha-lipoic acid, glutathione that are really trying to go down one pathway. And glutathione I use because the whole body becomes low in glutathione. That gets a little confused. Some people are like, oh, well this mycotoxin that I have doesn’t go through the glutathione pathway in the liver. That’s fine. That’s why we’re using the other things that do glucuronidation like resveratrol and Curcumin. But we use glutathione because every mitochondria in the body gets affected by mycotoxins, and they all get low in glutathione. So it’s more like a mitochondria rehab.

Dr. Weitz: I see. I’d asked already a little bit about how to treat different molds or different mycotoxins differently. And I guess the interesting thing about the mycotoxins … And then you test the house for the mold and trying to correlate those. That’s kind of a complicated mess.

Dr. Crista: That’s crazy making. Yes, because the person could have been made sick from their college housing 20 years prior. They could have been colonized at that point. And now they are the sick building. So it does become crazy making … Because you’re going to excrete different mycotoxins as well. They almost excrete like sedimentary layers. There are some that go really fast and easily, and then some are more persisters, like ochratoxin. Ochratoxin is a persister toxin because it binds to albumin so tightly. So we have to do things [inaudible 00:56:12]

Dr. Weitz: That’s interesting. So it binds to albumin.

Dr. Crista: It has a very high affinity for albumin, which is why it’s kidney. We could have probably predicted that. You get kidney cancer and kidney damage, IgA nephropathy, all of these things from ochratoxin because of how it binds.

Dr. Weitz: Can you measure that in a blood at all?

Dr. Crista: Not really easily with a blood test, that we’re seeing a ochratoxin binding albumin complex or anything like that. But there are some tests that we can do that are more fine tuned to see, if someone is eating something that is challenging their kidneys, you can see increased protein in their urine and things like that.

Dr. Weitz: Let me try to wrap this up. Let me ask you two last questions, both of which will probably take an hour each to answer. And one [inaudible 00:57:11]

Dr. Crista: … try to be fast.

Dr. Weitz: What’s what’s your favorite antifungal, and what’s your favorite biofilm buster?

Dr. Crista: Good. Antifungal is thyme. And the reason for that is that it has a very unique ability to shut down mycotoxin production in fungi and yeast and yeast growth. So it manages the yeast as well as fungi. It’s also antimicrobial, antibacterial.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:57:38] volatile oil form or-

Dr. Crista: Even as the whole plant. The essential oil has more of that ability, the killing ability, but the whole plant or an extract of the plant can shut down the mycotoxin. So what I will do is preload with some thyme before we really do the launching into the fight phase, because then it shuts down the ability for the mold to fight back.

Dr. Weitz: Is there a favorite product on the market that you like for that?

Dr. Crista: There’s a combination, which is kind of strong. I usually start with thyme tincture, but if they’re tolerating the thyme tincture for a couple of weeks, then we shift to the … Integrative Therapeutics has one called Y Formula. It has oregano, which would be my second favorite. So thyme, oregano, peppermint, and it’s got some other things so the gut doesn’t get so disrupted.

Dr. Weitz: And it’s called a what formula?

Dr. Crista: Y formula. It used to be called yeast formula. Then the FDA-

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Dr. Crista: No claims made, so it’s just Y Formula now. That’s a lovely one. Ortho Molecular has a nice one as well, but I start with single because these people are really sensitive. I start with just a single thyme glycerate or an herbal tincture that they just add to a little bit of water and drink. And if their body is handling that, then we can kind of move into stronger stuff.

Dr. Weitz: [inaudible 00:59:01] That’s a pretty strong one. What’s your favorite biofilm buster?

Dr. Crista: Biofilm buster, if we can do it, is ozone. So that would be one of my favorite, and then just enzymes.

Dr. Weitz: Blood ozone or [inaudible 00:59:17]

Dr. Crista: [inaudible 00:59:17] ozone, intranasal ozone, rectal ozone, any way to get the ozone. Unfortunately though, that can raise some other critters if the body isn’t ready. So we do ozone very selectively. So for normal people that can’t do ozone, I like Lumbrokinase, particularly for mold sick people, because the other enzymes are a fermented product. They’re acquired through fermentation, so your typical … What am I thinking? Like the enzyme formulas for sore muscles or for inflammation. Those are gained through fermentation where Lumbrokinase is roundworm. It’s just a worm. So that one my patients tend to handle better because it’s not fermented.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting.

Dr. Crista: But it’s a stronger one.

Dr. Weitz: Awesome. Awesome. Great information. Thank you Dr. Crista. Tell everybody how they can find out about your course and learn more information about you, your website.

Dr. Crista: So my website is DrCrista.com. That’s D-R-C-R-I-S-T-A.com. And my book is Break the Mold. I have a practitioner training. It’s 10 hours, deep dive. Become mold literate certified. You have to pass tests and the whole thing. So then you will get put on my website as a … And that’s for primary care trained practitioners. You’ll get put on my website and referral, and we get many, many, many hits a day looking for practitioners who are mold literate, so if that interests you.

And then for the public, I’m rolling out a series of courses I can get them done. The first one that’s out is nine things to know if you’re still in mold. So a lot of people are being told by their doctor, they’re mold literate doctor, which frustrates me, oh, we can’t treat you until you get out. That’s not right. They can do a lot of things while they’re still in mold, so that they’re not as sick when they leave. And then my upcoming course for the public is mold and kids because that’s a whole other … My book is pretty much for adults. And so there are different things you need to do with kids. And it’s a little harder to get things into kids if it’s in a capsule. So we have to find ways to get it into kids in different ways.

Dr. Weitz: And what about the practitioner training course?

Dr. Crista: Practitioner training course is called. Are you missing mold illness? That’s the 10 hour training.

Dr. Weitz: Great. Excellent.

Dr. Crista: And in there I’m slowly translating all of my scribble notes of the individual mycotoxins and putting them into tech sheets. So if you do see a certain mycotoxin, you can just go to the tech sheet and know what to do about it.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, cool.

Dr. Crista: [inaudible 01:01:48]

Dr. Weitz: Great. [inaudible 01:01:52]

Dr. Crista: … list, right? [inaudible 01:01:54]

Dr. Weitz: Oh, I have many, many.

Dr. Crista: I can imagine.

Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness podcast. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star ratings and review. That way, more people will be able to find this Rational Wellness podcast when they’re searching for health podcasts. And I wanted to let everybody know that I do now have a few openings for new nutritional consultations for patients at my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition Clinic. So if you’re interested, please call my office, (310) 395-3111, and sign up for one of the few remaining slots for a comprehensive nutritional consultation with Dr. Ben Weitz. Thank you, and see you next week.

Toxic Mold Illness with Dr. Jill Crista: Rational Wellness Podcast 272

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