I want...
November 12, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
February 4, 2025
Leanne Vogel
I never thought that I would use my OURA ring as much as I do for just determining nervous system function. But when your pulse is elevated and your HRV is low, that is a sign that your nervous system is massively dysregulated. And that is just like a fight or flight situation that’s challenging to get out of, especially in mold. And the other concern you have with acute mold situations is master cell activation, which happens quite quickly after an exposure and can cause this cascade that gets real ugly, real fast and super not fun.
Leanne Vogel
Hey, My name is Leanne and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to.
Leanne Vogel
Eat, move and care for their bodies.
Leanne Vogel
This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto high protein to everything in between. I’m a small town holistic nutritionist turned three time international bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their.
Leanne Vogel
Health and stop second guessing themselves.
Leanne Vogel
I’m here to teach you how to.
Speaker C
Wade through the wellness noise to get.
Leanne Vogel
To the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals.
Leanne Vogel
Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management and mindset, empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered at your next doctor visit. Get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully. Join me as we embrace vitality, reclaim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness.
Leanne Vogel
Hello. Hello and welcome to another episode. We’re doing something a little bit different today. It has been super rainy and this is the only time that I have to record today’s episode and if I.
Speaker C
Don’T get my steps in on my.
Leanne Vogel
Indoor treadmill, it’s not going to happen. So I have my desk set up with my treadmill underneath my little walking stand up desk treadmill set up and I’m hoping that you can’t hear me walking and maybe huffing and puffing a little bit as we do today’s episode. This is my helpful pursuit. If I don’t get my steps in, it’s just so lame. So here we are and we’re gonna walk and talk together and probably you’re doing some other Activity like doing laundry or maybe you’re on a walk too. So we’re gonna walk together and chat about acute mold exposure. So if you joined us on the last episode, November 5th, episode 498, I was talking about my travels and spending over a month in Europe, which was overall a huge challenge. Like when I get together with my girlfriends and they ask me how the trip was, I’m like, I wouldn’t do it again.
Leanne Vogel
Like that. I was very lonely. But I’m glad that I did it. But there are a lot of challenges with that. But the beautiful thing is that I came home fully prepared for what was about to blow up in my face. And had I not gone on that trip and been challenged to take things one moment at a time, really get out of my comfort zone, really, really trusting in God in every single aspect of my day to day, I couldn’t have done the last couple of weeks that happened over here at our home. So, spoiler alert, I get back from Europe and I get exposed to mold. So let’s go through the full timelines that you can understand things.
Leanne Vogel
I also want to talk about the difference between acute and chronic exposure even before we get started. Let’s actually do that right now. So many, many, many years ago, about 10 years ago, I was exposed to mold, didn’t know it, reacted very poorly to it, lived in that mold for years, and continued to feel absolutely terrible. That is a chronic mold exposure. Okay, we’re not covering that area today. What we’re covering is all is well, all is good in your home. And then all of a sudden you find out that there’s an acute situation that occurred in your home and you got to deal with it. Okay? And so that’s what happened to me.
Leanne Vogel
And the two protocols, how we address what we’re doing for the body especially is going to be very, very different. In the case of a chronic mold exposure, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done over months and months and months and in some cases over a year to just balance the body, detox the body, regulate an inflammatory response and really, really get yourself stabilized, both mast cells and nervous system. And there’s a lot of stuff to it. And so I do that a lot with my clients, individuals that have been exposed to water damaged materials over months and months and months and years and years and years and kind of just working through exactly what’s happening and how to regulate the body. And so that’s a more heavy lift. Okay. Not saying it’s impossible. I mean I do this day in, day out with my clients and my private practice.
Leanne Vogel
But what we’re talking about today is you’re healthy, all is good, perhaps your drainage pathways are already open, and life is fantastic. And all of a sudden, there’s a leak in your home that wasn’t there before, and you have to address it. Okay, so I’ll give you kind of a timeline of what occurred. So right before I went to Europe, probably about two weeks before, I did a air quality test, which I do every six months or so. I started doing this when we lived on boats because boats will get a lot of water damage all the time. It’s, like, ongoing. And so I was constantly assessing areas for water damage, assessing the air quality, and then we were coming up with plans on how to address fully without getting exposed and all those things. And it was just a very normal part of living on a boat.
Leanne Vogel
And so when we moved into a home in early 2024, I decided to continue assessing air quality. And so even before we signed our lease, I had asked our landlord if I could test the air before we even signed the lease to make sure that it was safe. And I continue to test the air every, like, four to six months or so. And I also check for visible water damage. Okay. Like once a week on Fridays, I just walk around the house, look in areas, and assess to see if there’s water coming in. I also, from our boating days, have a FLIR camera, which I use once a week also just checking for cold spots in the wall. Now, of course, this isn’t an exact science, and especially in warm areas, it can be challenging because the water and the temperature of the walls is quite similar.
Leanne Vogel
And I found it to be challenging to determine unless. Unless you can see the water coming in, the floor doesn’t really help all that much. But I continue to use that and my moisture meter, just as, you know, insurance against making sure that I’m not breathing in or we’re not exposed to things that we don’t need to be exposed to. So right before I left, I did an air quality test. My preferred air quality test is from a company called called GOT Mold. You can actually get it on Amazon. I will include a link in the show notes today for actually, like, all the things. I’ll just make, like, a little resource for you.
Leanne Vogel
So we’ll include the GOT Mold testing in there. And yeah, so I did that a couple of weeks before I left. It came back, it was fine. I did my visual inspections as I normally do. Everything was fine. I Go to Europe. I come back and one of the first things I did was turn on all of my filters. My husband Kevin hates my air doctors and my Jasper units and like he just hates the noise.
Leanne Vogel
He hates, he hates them. So when I leave, when I’m gone for any amount of time, he’s constantly turning them off and he just can’t sleep as well with them on. And so when I’m gone he’s like, yes, I can sleep without them on. So I turn on the air filters and I walked around the home and I checked everything and everything looked fine. That night I woke up around 2am I was having a hard time sleeping. I thought it was just because I traveled a whole bunch. Like you know how it is traveling from Europe. You’re just like a little bit off your, your routine.
Leanne Vogel
And I had been hiking a lot in Europe, so I thought, you know, maybe I’m just a little bit frazzled. And I woke up middle of the night and my hands were hurting really bad and I thought it was just because altitude and maybe I had a little bit of edema and I didn’t think much of it. And this symptom progressed quite considerably over the next couple of days to that Sunday when somebody went to shake my hand at church. It hurt so bad that I pulled away and was like, if this is what arthritis feels like, oh my goodness, that is the most painful. And I mean she was, she was an elderly lady. Like she didn’t squeeze my hand super intensely. So I knew that there was something wrong. And in my mind I had been on vitamin A and a couple of bone marrow supplements to help some neck pain and other things I had going on previously.
Leanne Vogel
So I just thought, okay, well maybe it’s a fat soluble vitamin that’s just displaying as excess. Because when you’re taking vitamins A, D, E, K, how you know that you are taking too much or you’ve kind of pushed the threshold as you can get a lot of body pains. That’s happened to me with vitamin D and vitamin A and K and E in the past. And so this felt very similar. So I dropped my vitamin A, I dropped my vitamin K and it didn’t change. And fast forward two days, Coconut and I, our dog are sitting on the couch and out of the corner of my eye I see these bubbles on the wall and I’m like, oh boy, oh boy. This is the night before the hurricane was set to come to Florida. I had already committed to having a friend over who broke her leg and needed someplace to Stay.
Leanne Vogel
Cause she was nervous about the home that she was staying in during the storm. And I said, yeah, like, come over. That’s fine. You know, we have a generator and all the things. And so I feel very confident in the home that we have. So, yeah, come on over. So the night before she’s planning to come, I see this bubbling on the wall. And I remembered that there was a southern wind that came in that morning with rain.
Leanne Vogel
And that’s very rare for this area, a southern wind with rain. And so I thought, oh, boy, I need to check the whole southern wall, the house. And sure enough, all the windows on the south side were leaking. And so I contacted my landlord, and here’s the thing. If you own your own home, there are things that you can do that somebody who’s renting just cannot. Nine times out of ten, your landlord will just say, yeah, yeah, I’ll have somebody come by and, you know, shave down the bubbles and repaint it. And that’s not going to address the situation. And unfortunately, when you don’t own your home, you’re kind of at a limit of what you can do because it’s not your place.
Leanne Vogel
And so I knew getting back into homes, it was our first time in over, I want to say, eight years living in a house. We had lived in boats and RVs. And I knew that I wanted to have a landlord that was awesome. And I really felt good about the landlord that we chose. I mean, we chose this house, but we also chose the landlord. And he just. Oh, he rose to the occasion. I.
Leanne Vogel
I couldn’t have done the last couple of weeks without him being awesome. I. I don’t even know what I would have done had he said, yeah, yeah, we’ll just get somebody out to paint it. Well, I would have told him, okay, great, I’m not paying my rent. I’m leaving. So I’m just so glad that it worked out. But I know in. In many cases, we don’t have a lot of bargaining ability when we’re renters.
Leanne Vogel
So as I share this story, I fully realize that I’m one of the lucky ones, like one of the 5 or 10% where the landlord is willing to put in the right work to get the job done. And I’ve found having owned properties and rented properties in the past, it’s always better. And you’re going to have a far better experience if you rent from an individual who owns this home that was their home, and they’re renting it out because they’re moving somewhere. They got a job somewhere. They’re going to be far more responsible with their home because it is their home, as opposed to a company that owns multiple properties. There’s less emotion in it, there’s less care in it. Generally speaking, that has been my experience. And so when we were looking for a home, understanding the severity of mold and water damage and issues that can come up and storms and just the complexities of life, that it’s good to have somebody who cares for the home properly and if there are issues, will likely do the right thing.
Leanne Vogel
So I fully understand that I was very lucky to have a landlord that was like, yeah, I’ll get somebody out there, like, immediately. And so here I am, night before the storm. Guys come over and immediately I start asking trick questions of the remediators so that I can understand whether or not they’re equipped to deal with the situation. And so many of the questions that I asked were like, I said trick questions, like, what are you going to do with the drywall? Do you just, like, take it off, dry it and put it back? Or like, of course they’re not going to do that. They’re going to ideally take out all the wet things, including the wet wood. And I said, well, do we care about, you know, the air quality while we’re taking out the stuff? Or like, how does that work? Like, does the stuff, does the dust get in the air? Just asking silly questions, pretending like I didn’t know what I was talking about, which I find diffuses the experience. If you come in all hot and heavy, you know, saying, like, I know everything about mold and this is what we need to do, I often find that it’s not welcomed as much as just being, like, super humble and asking questions. And he aced all the questions.
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Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
Of things that I was looking for in a remediation company was one, understanding that the water damaged materials are dangerous. You when you’re cutting through them, when you’re having them in your home, when you’re carting them to the trash, it’s important to think of them like a contaminant that you don’t want to get on anything or around anyone. Preparing the space is also really important. Making sure that that contaminant stays as far away as possible from the homeowner and even the workers themselves. Another piece is how to prepare the area before you close it back up. Like, are they going to spray it with antibacterial spray, otherwise known as fogging? The concern there. And a lot of companies will do this, a lot of rental companies will do this. They’ll just say, yeah, if we have a mold problem, we’re going to fog the home and that’ll stop the mold from growing.
Leanne Vogel
That’s not entirely true, unfortunately. Just like your body has a microbiome, your home has a microbiome. And introducing these antibacterial agents is very much like introducing a antibiotic into the body. And it can kill not only the bad guys, but also the good guys and really affect your home’s balance. And so that was another piece. I really made sure that they didn’t do fogging. I wanted to make sure that they had negative pressure on the space, meaning that when they were cutting through things that dust wasn’t going to come out into the living space. Okay, so why, like, why do I care about this? Why can’t they just cut open stuff, do what they need, get the water damaged stuff out and be done with it? Well, when materials are wet, it’s going to, in 24 to 48 hours, create mold.
Leanne Vogel
And the mold is not necessarily the problem. The mycotoxins that the mold creates, that’s the problem. So those mycotoxins are going to pretty immediately affect our mitochondrial function. We’re going to deal with brain fog and difficulty focusing vision or hearing problems even. We can deal with chronic fatigue, headaches, nosebleeds, breathing problems, lower body temperature. Our thyroid can start to act out pretty quickly. For those that already have thyroid issues, inflammation. So with my story, just waking up that first night being like, oh, my goodness, my hands.
Leanne Vogel
Oh, they were so painful. And I just didn’t put two and two together until I saw that water damage. Like, oh, right, yeah, no, totally. That. That’s because of the water issue. We can wake up tired even after we’ve had six or more hours of sleep. Our eyes can be really sensitive to bright or direct light. And then we get into some of the mycotoxin symptoms.
Leanne Vogel
Okay, so those are going to be things like stuffy nose and sinus pain, especially rashes are a thing, eczema, chronic sibo issues, bloating, difficulty sleeping. So if you remember from my story, that first night, I’m waking up at 2am like, this is so not like me at this part of my cycle. Especially as I near my period about days 25 deplete, I have a really hard time sleeping. I always have. And so I was on, like, day five of my cycle, and I’m like, there’s something wrong here. This is not normal. Anxiety and depression can show up pretty quickly, actually. Of course, you can experience a mildewy smell in your home, but just because you don’t smell, that doesn’t mean there isn’t mold growing.
Leanne Vogel
So I want to preface that ongoing sinus infections, rather, are a key piece here. And I’ve struggled with sinus infections ongoing. I’m very, very sensitive to my environment, and it can be very, very challenging to use the sinus infections as a red flag to the environment that I’m in, because I could walk into the post office, be there for 10 minutes, and then get a sinus infection. And so I usually don’t use it as an indicator of, oh, my goodness, my home has mold, because I could get it from anywhere at any time pretty quickly. And so that’s why mold and the mycotoxins that they create can be such a danger. And when it comes to your drainage pathways. So we talked about drainage before on the podcast. Basically, think of your body like a sponge.
Leanne Vogel
And when our drainage pathways are blocked, we can’t wring out the toxicities that we would normally be able to wring out as a little sponge. That’s really good at it really easily. So drainage pathways include your sweat, your urine, your poop, your lymph Your breath. Okay, so your liver is part of that too. It is influenced by your lymph as well. Those two are closely tied. And so signs that you’re having drainage dysfunction issues include things like constipation or skin issues or edema. Like I said, like I thought, maybe this is edema.
Leanne Vogel
What’s going on here? Waking up between one or four, that’s usually related to the liver, chronic inflammation, heart palpitations, being sensitive to light, sound, or even sensitive to emf. Having morning stiffness or breathing or lung issues. You can kind of hear my breath is not ideal one because I’m walking on a 12% incline walking pad while we’re having this conversation. But also my lungs are not awesome, having been exposed to this over the last couple weeks. So I’m trying my best. Another big sign of drainage issues has to do with puffy eyes. Like, if you wake up and the bags in your eyes are pretty puffy and it takes yourself a little while to kind of regulate, that can be another sign of drainage issues. And so because we don’t live in a vacuum and we have to understand that these sorts of things are going to happen in our life, the key thing that you can do to prepare for an acute water damage situation, which is bound to happen in your life either at work or church or home, is to make sure that your drainage is open.
Leanne Vogel
So when I started this work, when I kind of shifted much of my work from just basic holistic nutrition, meal plans, macro balances, which I still do a ton of, into more blood work and functional wellness and looking into mold, illness and parasite issues and these root causes that are keeping us sick. A big, big, big, big thing that was really important to me from the get go is making sure that my drainage is always open. Because if you are a supple little sponge that’s able to squeeze out the things that you’re exposed to, you’re going to have a far easier time when it comes to these acute situations. And so when I saw the bubbles on the wall and I thought about having my friend over and while all this stuff is going on and she had no place to go, I thought, okay, well, I’ve kept up with my drainage practices. I should be okay. I should be fine. As long as they prepare things properly, that was a big. That’s a big part.
Leanne Vogel
As long as they prepare things properly, everything should be fine. Because I had kept up with once a week, coffee enemas once a week, sauna once a week, castor oil pack, once a week, vibration plate. And so I felt pretty confident in my drainage pathway work that once I saw the water damage, I was like, okay, I’m going to get myself on a binder, I’m going to get myself on more drainage support and we’re just going to see how this goes. Now, when it comes to binder support in a acute mold situation, assuming that you’ve already done root cause work, like, this is not your first time taking a binder, I would probably do something like Ultra binder from Quicksilver. I love that binder. For mold situations. Fantastic. Or if you’re new to binders, this is your first time you have an acute mold situation.
Leanne Vogel
I would go with like biotoxin binder from Selcor. Selcor doesn’t allow just a regular human being to go on and like order their products. So I’m going to include my Selcor link in the show notes so you can check it out. And myself personally, I have little kits at home for acute situations that happen. Like if I get a weird bug bite or a tick bite or it’s actually referred to as a tick sting if we want to get technical, but let’s leave it alone or I get an acute mold situation. I have all of these supports in my home, so when this happens, I’m not freaking out like, oh my gosh, when am I going to get my binding agent and how long is it going to take to get to my home? I already have it all on board. So I just went into my cabinet, found the stuff and started taking it. So a binder is really essential and then drainage pathway support.
Leanne Vogel
So when it comes to mold, the best drainage pathway support I think is Tadka. Pretty hardcore. Not ideal if you’ve had gallbladder stones. And I would avoid just because of the complexities with that. But another great option which I personally love using and I respond really well to is KL support from Selcor. And this supports both kidney and liver and it’s a well balanced supplement. Super. Love it.
Leanne Vogel
So those are the two items that I started taking immediately after I saw the water damage. Now after I spoke to the mold inspector dude, I felt very confident that he would do a really good job. My landlord asked, like, hey, do you approve this guy? Like, my landlord knows what I do for a living. He knows that I’ve walked through this process with many, many, many clients. And so I said, yeah, like, he seems like the real deal. I’m cool to use him if you are. And so they got to work, they tented off everything. They started cutting through the drywall.
Leanne Vogel
And that’s kind of when things went a little sideways and we started arguing a lot, because I chose to move as much as I could of our furniture out of the spaces so that it wasn’t covered in the dust, because the dust has the mold, and the mold spores create the mycotoxins. And, like, why wouldn’t you move that stuff out if you could? So I frantically, quickly, and effectively and efficiently moved as much as I could out of the space. Most of it went into our bedroom. Because I created positive pressure, meaning I was able to, with fans, push the air from the bedroom over into the common spaces and ideally in the workspaces. What I wanted them to do was create negative pressure, meaning the air that’s in those spaces stays in those spaces or goes outside so it doesn’t go back into the common area. Well, they didn’t set up the negative pressures correctly. And so when I came back, there was dust everywhere. And the following day, when they were cutting through the wood, after I had argued with them, left, right, sideways, and inside out.
Leanne Vogel
And I said, like, we really need negative pressure. I was working in the bedroom. I had to keep up with clients while this was going on, because I run my business, and I have commitments like everybody does. And all of a sudden, I was conversing with a client, and my right side beside my mouth started pulling back, almost like a muscle twitch, but it, like, got stuck in place, and it kind of went down my neck, and it was just really tight. And I’m like, oh, boy. Like, that’s a neurological symptom right there. And so I went outside to where they were working, and sure enough, they were cutting through the wet wood without having that negative pressure running with the door open, like, just wide open with air just flowing everywhere. And it was enough for me to have a symptom.
Leanne Vogel
And that. That kind of triggered the nervous system response in me quite quickly. Like, I was fine for days before, but as soon as they cut into that wood and as soon as it wasn’t prepared properly, that’s when my nervous system took over and got dysregulated. And the sign of that initially was that pull on the side of my mouth. And then my pulse increased quite high. And that night, my HRV was, like, 10 or 12, like, just tanked. And we’ve talked about HRV in the past. I definitely recommend, if you’re new to this concept and you want to understand how you can use HRV to understand so much about your body, I highly recommend checking out episode 489 labeled HRV and Vagus Nerve.
Leanne Vogel
Fabulous stuff. I never thought that I would use my oura ring as much as I do for just determining nervous system function. But when your pulse is elevated and your HRV is low, that is a sign that your nervous system system is massively dysregulated. And that is just like a fight or flight situation that’s challenging to get out of, especially in mold. And the other concern you have with acute mold situations is mast cell activation, which happens quite quickly after an exposure and can cause this cascade that gets real ugly real fast and super not fun. For myself, it shows up primarily as fatigue, flushing. Like, I’ll just feel like all of a sudden my body gets, like, really hot and red and just, like, overblown. I can have ear pain primarily, like, behind my ear.
Leanne Vogel
My throat can get itchy or just my skin will get itchy, like, with the. With the, like, overwhelming heat. Okay, so those can be signs of a mast cell activation. I want to go through some other common symptoms that you know what’s happening there. So Sweating, weight gain, weight loss. Though those do take some time to obviously show up. Rashes, appetite changes, ear congestion, like ears that are constantly plugged, a burning mouth, dental decay can be one. This is obviously over time of just like being stuck in mast cell activation.
Leanne Vogel
A constant sore throat, postnasal drip, swollen lymph, lymph nodes, painful lymph nodes, dizziness, sleep apnea, wheezing, trouble catching your breath, weakness, vertigo, feeling queasy, like, nauseous, vomiting, diarrhea. Acid reflux can also be part of it. Tics, tremors, seizures, unexplained mood changes, Anxiety, panic, depression, anger. Easily bruised or easy to bleed, like when you hit yourself. And it just, like, keeps on coming. Slow healing, getting infections easily, food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities. So these are signs of mast cell activation. Then we get into, like, Leon, what do you even.
Leanne Vogel
What do you even mean by mast cell activation? What’s going on there? Well, mast cells often get a bad reputation. Oftentimes you’ve heard of mca. Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. But when the nervous system is dysregulated, oftentimes the mast cells kind of like, go hand in hand with that or either. Or, like, the mast cells can then get dysregulated, and then your. Your nervous system will as well. Now, the mast cells live in the fascia, and oftentimes when they’re immediately triggered, they will cause, like, itchiness and puffiness right away. And so oftentimes, people will think, oh, well, I’m having an allergic reaction.
Leanne Vogel
It is involving the immune system, but it becomes this dysregulated space that your body just stays in because the mast cells of the immune system have chemical signaling, which then go through the whole body, and you’re kind of just, like, stuck and, like, locked in to this area. Previous, when I had mast cell activation, a big, big symptoms symptom, rather, that I had all the time, was when I’d eat, I’d get sleepy because the histamines would cause me to get sleepy. And so it was like an ongoing problem. And so usually histamine and mast cell activation will come hand in hand. And the problem with mast cells and this ongoing immune system dysregulation is that we become Th2 dominant, meaning we have chronic inflammation, and therefore we’re not able to kill pathogens. So the main reason why being exposed to mold ongoing then causes parasite infections and sibo and your gut becomes a total mess is because your body, your immune system is so dominant in TH2 instead of balanced in both TH1 and TH2, that you just become overly inflamed and unable to kill off pathogens. So the root cause behind this mast cell activation, where the immune system gets locked in place and just highly reactive, which then causes a ton of symptoms, we need to support the nervous system, because usually it gets dysregulated because of the nervous system, and we need to bring in mast cell supplementation, and then we need to get to the root cause that caused both of these. Okay.
Leanne Vogel
So in the case of an acute mold situation, you have the mold which is causing the symptoms overall, because the mycotoxins are toxins to the body. Okay. Then your nervous system gets dysregulated, which then causes your immune system to get dysregulated. And so to get through all of this, you need to address the root cause, which in this case is mold. Okay? So when it came to my nervous system starting to get involved, I wanted to address, obviously, nervous system regulation and then mast cell regulation so I could bring my body back into balance. So, thankfully, because I had done so much drainage work leading up to this acute exposure, I was far better equipped than somebody who’s never done this work. And so if you in the history of your life have dealt with any sort of water damage, you know that it is actually quite a common thing. And if you’re currently dealing with any symptoms of mold issues, I encourage you to do drainage Work to start kind of thinking about water damage, exposure and issues with water damage.
Leanne Vogel
Because it will affect your body’s ability to regulate nervous system, it will affect your immune system for fighting off pathogens ongoing so you can, you can hear in the acute situation. If left untreated, it will become a chronic situation of your nervous system being dysregulated, meaning you’re not responding to workouts, you’re unable to lose weight, you’re stressed all the time, you’re just dysregulated. Nervous system dysregulation feels very different on different people. But to me it feels like I haven’t slept in 20 days and somebody saying that they’re out of chocolate flavored ice cream when I wanted chocolate flavored ice cream takes me over the edge, like the smallest things which should not be a big deal. And logically I’m like, why am I reacting to this? That is how my nervous system dysregulation presents itself. With also an elevated pulse, really bad hrv, terrible recovery in my workouts, walking is even painful. Like I just want to curl up in the corner and cry or sometimes I don’t even have any feeling left and I just, I want to be there with no one talking to me. So it’s not pleasant.
Speaker D
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Leanne Vogel
And so as soon as I saw this water situation, as soon as I knew what we were dealing with, and then I started having that nervous system dysregulation in addition to the binding agent and the drainage supplement, I increased my drainage practices. So for me, coffee enemas work really, really great. I love them, my liver loves them. So I increase those. I increase my castor oil packs, I increase going into the sauna, I increase my lymphatic drainage, and I brought in mast cell support. So for me personally, the best way to support mast cells is through quercetin. I respond really well to quercetin. There are other components that can be used, but I think quercetin is a really, really, really great one for most people.
Leanne Vogel
Also, if you have MTHFR or issues with methylation, this does take into account because methylation is involved in histamine breakdown. And so we want to make sure that leading into these sorts of issues, you have that kind of dialed in and you understand your B12 defoliate to B6 balance and what’s needed. And so I was stabilizing the mast cells through supplementation. That’s usually how we do it with the immune system. And then I needed to balance my nervous system, which, because this is not new to me because I’ve had to kind of tippy toe around these issues in the past. In fact, my parents and I. My parents, they’re wonderful. I love them.
Leanne Vogel
I love that God has given us another opportunity to connect because it wasn’t always easy. You know, I was a challenging teenager, as many of us were. And so I’m so glad that I get to spend time with my parents and love on my parents and have a relationship with them again. And my parents are learning how to use, like, Airbnb. And my dad, like, rented this horrible place. We call it the Red Couch place. It was terrible. I walked in and immediately my pulse was elevated and my nervous system got dysregulated.
Leanne Vogel
And that was kind of the introduction. Wearing my ring for the first time, being exposed to mold, being like, oh, wow, like, I can influence this. I can see my hrv, I can do certain things and my HIV will change. But I really started getting into understanding what influences my HRV positively because the things that influence my HRV positively will help to regulate my nervous system and help me overcome these exposures and even jet lag. It’s like, incredible for overcoming these sorts of issues by regulating the nervous system. So for myself personally, I know that chiropractic works really, really good. So I went to my chiropractor and I told him what was going on and he helped me. Acupuncture works really, really well, and so does somatic Exercises.
Leanne Vogel
So there are a bunch of exercises online. I’ll include a video of my favorite. But on the go, like on the fly, if I don’t want to do like all the exercises, I don’t know, it takes five minutes, so it’s not epic. But on the fly, I’ll do shaking. So literally you’re just standing and shaking your body all over. And that is enough for me to really get into that nervousness system balance and my pulsetto I was using quite significantly. We talked about that again in episode 489. And so that’s really how you overcome from a physical perspective, the mold situation.
Leanne Vogel
Another piece I want to highlight is the sinuses. Because when you’re breathing in mold, mold spores, which create mycotoxins, they actually wedge in your sinus and create like a colony of disgustingness. So when I knew that there was mold in the house, when I saw the water damage underneath the windows and immediately started taking my nasal spray, which I do quite regularly anyways, because like I said, I get sinus infections all the time. All the time. And so I’m pretty like well versed at this. And what I found for myself to be really helpful is xylitol spray, which I add frankincense oil to. So frankincense essential oil. This is not for the faint of heart.
Leanne Vogel
This is not something that I would recommend you just like go out and do on your own. So if you’re just getting started, things like propolis and silver spray work really well. But that’s only going to get to like the little baby parts of your sinus, not like the whole thing like above your forehead and all this stuff. That’s where you get into nebulizing. And so if you want to learn more about that, you can do some Google research and figure it out. I just don’t feel overly comfortable sharing it publicly because I wouldn’t even give this to all of my clients. But that is an option, as is things like Navage or Neti Pots I personally can’t use because it will just give me a further infection or cause a new infection. They always trigger infection for me.
Leanne Vogel
And yeah, so I think it’s because of my deviated septum that it just causes problems, so I don’t even bother. But if you respond really well to that as soon as you’re exposed to acute mold situation, it’s really helpful to continue to flush out the sinus. And then comes the last piece of kind of the story and the process. If I could do this all over again. And I knew with my little crystal ball that there was going to be a water damage situation. I probably wouldn’t have invited my friend over. She was in a really rough place and needed a place to stay. And I think in the Lord’s provision, it was very much like, I committed to it and then found the water damage a couple hours later.
Leanne Vogel
And so I was like, I’m going to go forward with this. I shouldn’t have stayed in the home while they were working. I think I would have had a better experience not being here. And so after I got sick, found an Airbnb, I should have asked them to see the property first before I committed to renting it. And I got in there and the humidity was 85% and it was so musty. It was disgusting. Oh, it was so terrible. And after two nights, I just said, like, I can’t stay here.
Leanne Vogel
I need to leave. I didn’t ask for a refund. I was just like, I can’t stay here. And still they gave me a bad review because I guess I’m challenging. But that was such a bummer because I really, really, really care about my Airbnb reviews. But it is what it is. And I ended up, you know, when you get to the point, like, my nervous system was just so not okay that I got home, my house is a mess. I have no more furniture.
Leanne Vogel
I had to throw out so much stuff because the guys said they put the rest of it in my safe place. They didn’t. They didn’t cover it. They’re walking through on, like, over my carpets, like my area rugs. When they said that they would roll them up, it was just such a nightmare with them. They just, they knew what they were doing. Like, the head guy, the project manager, knew what he was doing. And then as soon as he left location, the guys that worked for him just did whatever.
Leanne Vogel
And it was just such a bummer because he knew what he was doing. And I would love to refer a good company because he knew the right thing, which many of them don’t. And it was just such, such an unfortunate thing. But so I come back, all my stuff is. Much of it needed to be trashed because much of it was upholstered and more challenging to clean all the hard surfaces. I was able to either use EC3 cleaner or vinegar with clove oil and just. Oh, my gosh. I’ve never cleaned a house so much in my entire life.
Leanne Vogel
Like, for floor to ceiling multiple times. This house, you could eat off the floor or walls or ceiling or literally any place for the next couple of weeks because it is so clean. So I decided I’m going to get a tent and I’m going to sleep in the backyard because I can’t even be bothered. I don’t want to be exposed again. I’m exhausted. Coconut, our dog, has been, like, so sweet through this whole process. She just wanted to be with me. And people were saying, you could stay with me, but you can’t bring your dog.
Leanne Vogel
And I was like, forget it. I’m just gonna sleep in my backyard. And it was perfect. It was so perfect. It was so wonderful. And they finished up the work. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and washed all of our clothes with vinegar, washed every surface, tossed a whole bunch of stuff that I just couldn’t clean. And that’s not something you need to do.
Leanne Vogel
It’s just that I chose to do it because of how much dust was on everything that wasn’t properly even covered. Like, covered would have been. I would have played around with covered, but uncovered with construction material on it. I just was like, I. I’m not playing this game for the next couple of months to just feel like trash. And so I’ve been in the home now for five days, feeling pretty good. My HRV has recovered nicely. My pulse is good.
Leanne Vogel
My nervous system’s good. I’m walking on my treadmill. My lungs are still not ideal. I did get some laryngitis, too, through this process, which is not uncommon for me. That’s kind of my default. My lungs have always been not great. I continue to work on them, but, goodness gracious, they are weak, and that is my weak spot. And we all do have our weak spots, and it’s important to know what those are, to constantly coach them up and support them as best as we can.
Leanne Vogel
But overall, I feel pretty good. I know that my body could not have handled this a couple of years ago. Not as well as it did. Like, yeah, we did have some issues. I think that if I would have not been in the home while all this was happening, and I would have found a safe place to just lay low for a bit, I think I could have avoided a lot of the nervous system stuff, and I wouldn’t have been here when they cut through things. And I think I. I would have handled things a lot better. But given the circumstances, that just wasn’t an option.
Leanne Vogel
And Kevin did say, you’re going to regret this. You really need to leave. And I was like, I can. I made a commitment. So here we are. And I definitely learned a lot through the process. When these things happen, it can be helpful to test your mycotoxins to kind of see how your body’s responding. One of the supplements that I chose to take to support myself, especially when the laryngitis started happening, and the sinus stuff, I brought in methylene blue, which is like the one, two punch for me, and the mitochondria just love it.
Leanne Vogel
And it just regulates myself so well. I love that stuff. And I always forget about it. I always have to be reminded. I’m like, right, yeah, my body loves methylene blue. So when I brought that in, you can’t test your mycotoxins. Being on methylene blue, it really messes up with the results. So I haven’t tested my mycotoxins yet.
Leanne Vogel
I’m going to give myself another couple days on methylene blue before I take it down. I just want to really support my mitochondria as I start working out and walking and being active again to make sure that I’m just recovering well and not getting too ahead of myself. So I may test my mycotoxin urine to just make sure all is well. I also want to give myself a couple of weeks outside of that super musty, disgusting Airbnb that I was in, because anything that I could potentially dump in the urine could potentially be from that house and not the exposure that I had. And we definitely want to make sure that we’re kind of on the other side of it. But as somebody who’s had this experience a couple of times, I can usually tell when my body has kind of regulated and we’re, like, good to go. And I definitely feel like I’m on the other side of it. The wall is all fixed up.
Leanne Vogel
It’s like it never happened. I did air quality testing yesterday, actually, so I should have that report back in a couple of days. And I’m hoping that it’s good. If it’s not. I’m not entirely sure what we’re gonna do, but we take it day by day. If my trip to the Azores, hiking by myself for hours and hours and hours taught me anything, it’s that you just need to focus on the next couple of minutes. And when these things happen, it’s really good, especially for your nervous system, to just focus on the next little bit. And so I remember when my mom called on that day when I came back into the house, and I’m like, I don’t have an Airbnb, and the dog is in the backyard, and I have no idea what we’re gonna do.
Leanne Vogel
She’s like, where are you going to sleep? I’m like, I have no idea. It’s only 2pm I sleep around 10pm so we got lots of time to figure it out. And that’s really how you have to take these things sometimes, because the nervous system itself can just get totally frazzled if you try to take on too much. And so, yeah, that was my acute mold situation. I hope that something in there I shared was helpful for you. I hope my huffing and puffing on my treadmill was not too much for you. I try to get in about 9,000 steps a day, and this morning I just woke up, and it was one of the first days, like, back in the house and just, like, getting organized, and I was like, I don’t want to go for a walk. I just want to have a sleepy morning before I go to the gym.
Leanne Vogel
So I chose not to walk, which meant that I was down 5,000 steps this afternoon. And so, yay. I got. I got my 5,000 chatting with you right now, which is just so great. I love my standup desk. I love that we got to do this. And I will be sure to include those resources in the show notes, including the somatic exercises that I use, the mold testing, and the cell core code. Should you want to check out some of those supplements that I recommended.
Leanne Vogel
When it comes to the mold testing, you might hear some people say, no, no, no. Ermi is best. You need an ermi. I have gone back and forth on mold testing and what’s best at the end of the day. The thing I care most about is the air that I’m breathing. And so I choose to test air because at the end of the day, if the air is safe, then generally I’m safe. If the dust is unsafe, chances are it’s not going to influence me too too much and influence my health. So some practitioners will test dust in an army test.
Leanne Vogel
Other practitioners will test air. I more go toward the air because I care about what I’m breathing in and just the safety and quality overall. I find army tests, they’re usually, like, super high, crazy scary. I think they can be helpful for individuals who have experienced CSRs and they’re just, like, in a really, really bad place. And so maybe that testing at that point could be helpful. So, okay, I’m going to sign off. I hope you have a great rest of your day. And thanks for hanging out with me.
Leanne Vogel
Bye.
Leanne Vogel
Thanks for listening to the Helpful Pursuit Podcast. Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the show. If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple places you can go. The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com where.
Speaker D
You’Re going to find loads of recipes.
Leanne Vogel
The second is a free parasite protocol.
Leanne Vogel
That I’ve put together for you that.
Leanne Vogel
Outlines symptoms, testing and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to. That’s available available at healthfulpursuit.com parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your doctor for so that you can.
Leanne Vogel
Get a full picture of your health.
Leanne Vogel
You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com labs the helpful pursuit Podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition and diet and intended for informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor is it to be construed as such. We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the Healthful Pursuit Podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind. Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your.
Leanne Vogel
Health and nutrition program.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.