Dr Jill Crista is one of the biggest names in mold illness detoxification and recovery. Purchasing the audio version of her well-lauded book,
'Break the Mold' is next on my To Do list . . . this very afternoon, in fact.
See her simplistic breakdown of the mold problem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_bRAFPp28A
Whatever podcast Dr Crista is interviewed on, she's not just an educational listen, she's a very accessible one.
While, at times, given how atrocious and debilitated I feel, still deep in my own unresolved mold illness, I could do with a little less "jokey-ness", her trademark simple-speak and metaphors certainly help the novice get their arms around a subject that's as broad as it is deep.
Her website's promo blurb for her book points out that more than one in four buildings have had enough water damage to grow toxic mold. (I've no idea where that stat came from, but I believe it, including the likelihood that it applies equally outside of the United States).
If this has happened where you live, work, or spend a lot of time, mold could be affecting your health and you don’t even know it, the book's promo copy continues, offering readers access to Dr Crista's symptoms questionnaire as an opportunity to get at least an elementary handle on the likelihood that they've been exposed to mold and are suffering its effects. (NB: I've found the questionnaire elsewhere already, and it's extremely thorough and a power tool as the starting point for your self-education.)
Basic Mold Facts You Need to Know
In the YouTube video I've linked to for you here, Dr Crista provides her plain and readily understandable commentary on "mold facts that you need to know if you've been exposed to a water-damaged building."
These include:
- Mold is tenacious.
It's a "survivor", she explains. And it invades your body. (Depending on how long and how intensively you've been exposed, you may well have been "colonised" by it . . . which means it's self-cultivating within you.
Nice thought, huh? Sad, but true. And that's why it can take so long and be so hard to recover from mold toxicity.)
- Mold (and its mycotoxins i.e. 'mold farts', she dubs them)
change you . . . and not for the better. It changes your internal bio-environment.
It saps you of energy and motivation - in a way that's unlike anything you would have experienced before.
It changes your personality; you're so sick and so debilitated and suffering so many weird and horrible symptoms (that are often the source of non-acceptance by family and friends) that - after a certain period of time - you don't remember who you used to be.
- Mold is a potent neurotoxin.
In Dr Crista's words, it makes you "crazy, lazy and hazy" . . . and if it's colonising inside you, it's not hard to understand why that would be.
But it's really hard for anyone who has never experienced it to understand it. And that makes the life of the sufferer a whole lot harder, as they struggle to be believed.
In my case, one of my primary symptoms was Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), and until that particular symptom abated significantly in the past year or so, I was frequently the butt of outright ridicule . . . including by two dangerously ignorant ambulance attendants, who felt it more appropriate to stand in my kitchen and call me "looney tunes" type of names, as I sat on the floor clutching my chest with a heart that had been in severe Atrial Fibrillation for some six hours. (A/F is yet another known mold symptom; couple that with EMF hypersensitivity and that formed the circumstances the two "ambos" used for their own personal entertainment . . . notwithstanding that someone Atrial Fibrillation for that long can have a stroke at any moment).
- Mold can cause cardiac arrythmias.
See above bullet point.
- Mold is carcinogenic,
and its mycotoxins predispose the colonised patient to infections and various types of cancer, by weakening your immune system.
- Mold causes erratic changes in your vision.
- Mold makes you sensitive to all manner of things
you weren't sensitive to before. It constantly sets off new allergies . . . including EHS (see above relevant point) and MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and food sensitivities (by constantly wearing away the gut lining).
- Smashing a common myth,
dying mold becomes more toxic than "active" or wet mold, as it goes into overdrive to survive, and as it more easily disintegrates and sends it spores afar into the environment . . . which isn't good, if that environment is your home or your office.
- Electromagnetic Frequencies (EMFs) make molds grow, and in turn, mold then increases the amount of EMFs in the environment, causing the emission of yet more mycotoxins. It's a self-perpetuating environment Dr Crista dubs "mold brain".
- Mold toxicity is one of the most
prevalent causes of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
- Mold puts you in the "fight or flight"
("sympathetic") branch of the Autonomic Nervous System, when you should, most of the time, be in the "rest and digest" ("parasympathetic") branch. Moreover, it can push you further out of whack still, and into
"freeze" mode, making it virtually impossible to exercise . . . and to get up the energy or motivation to do almost anything.
- Mold illness is commonly misdiagnosed. Check out her symptoms questionnaire provides numerous examples of such.
- Landlords and insurers want to ignore or downplay mold as a problem . . . but it's ALWAYS a problem, and ALL mold is a problem, Dr Crista emphasises.
At some point, I'll write up my own experience with a past insurer and how they not only ignored my valiant endeavours to draw their attention to how using a standard carpet cleaner's dinky little handheld device had allowed a massive, hidden mold infestation to go undetected following a rain and roof-related event in my then-home . . . but how my persistence over this issue resulted, before long, in having my policy cancelled for my concern over the implications to all flood and water-affected claims, not just mine.
