Dear Subscribers,

Some people have been reading my posts for 15-20 years, maybe longer; others might have subscribed in the last week. To help you find more material, my personal site has fairly good navigation and probably a thousand pages or more of archives:

http://ingridnaiman.com/subscription_posts/posts_fungi.html

If you go to that page, you will see navigation links to the main sections. The links are on the left. Then, if you click on a particular subject, you will see more links at the bottom to other posts and web sites. Using mold as an example, there is a site called moldmisery.com with a lot of material, everything from details of my personal saga to the steps taken to remediate and the herbs that helped me to recover. The herbs themselves are on moldherbs.com.

Not to whine but rather to give hope, I want to note that I was very, very ill and had begun to slur. I had fairly serious cognitive issues and significant memory loss, mostly of pronouns so this suggests that a very specific place in the brain was affected. I could not remember the name of my best friend. I "knew" who she was but not her name. Names of herbs and plants also went missing. My joints hurt, my body was covered in itchy red blotches, and I gained an enormous amount of weight. I consulted many well meaning people and networked with other moldies, many of whom have since died. I'm sure anyone who knows me or who has listened to one of my webinars will agree that my mind is working. The red blotches are gone, my joints are fine, my vision is much better, and I have lost most of the weight I gained, not all, but at least two-thirds of the weight, most of which was gained in ten days. I am sure you can imagine how shocking it is to put on 5-10 pounds a day while doing almost nothing that would explain this.

So, when I talk about or write about mold, I am speaking from experience. However, unlike those who relied on their doctors for advice, I did a lot of research on my own. There are 3-4 issues with mold that are all somewhat independent and therefore have to be addressed more or less separately. One of the first obstacles to overcome is inertia and the rationalization that somehow the situation is just too overwhelming or futile to tackle. This is actually part of the psychological pathology of mold so unless it is addressed, the cure does not follow. My lawyer said once that while she advised all her clients to move out of their homes and even to sleep on a park bench if necessary that, much to her consternation, no one actually did what she suggested. I said, "That's a no brainer: people will promise one thing while in the office, but the moment they go home, they are too tired to function." The behavior is not based on denial or procrastination but such a severe loss of energy that the oomph needed to act is lacking.

In my case, I spent months dragging pillows and blankets from one spot to another, looking for just any place where the air felt clean enough to breathe. It was truly a nightmare, but ultimately, I remediated though there were many times that I wished I had simply forfeited the down payment on the house and walked out with my life and health. However, we learn and what we learn can benefit others.

Just to hit a homer here, I want to mention a client who lived in a high rise apartment complex in a big metropolitan area. She could not answer the simplest questions on the phone. The visible mold, probably stachybotrys, was the size of a dime. It was near a light fixture in the bathroom so probably moisture accumulated where the wires fed the fixture or condensation from the bath accumulated where there was more heat since older light bulbs produce 90% heat and 10% light. That is not to say that anyone should replace them with the mercury-laden newer fixtures, merely to underscore the devastating role of heat.

In any event, she would take her mobile phone into the elevator and I heard an immediate improvement in her ability to communicate. Then, she would hail a taxi from the street and her thinking was already clear enough that the need to rush to ER subsided. In short, she would be the stereotypal candidate for a label of hypochondria since most likely none of the symptoms she experienced could be replicated in the hospital, but I went through this scenario with her many times, always with the same relief when she started breathing fresh air. However, without that air, she was more or less a basket case, unfortunately a very frustrated and angry basket case since her "hypochondria" was compounded by hysteria.

She sent me the longest and most elaborate case history I have ever received in my 45 years of work in holistic health. There were documents, color pictures, narratives, and evaluations of advice on every page, hundreds of pages. So, you see, while we search for relief from mold, we accumulate a lot of experience. I told my translator that if all the images on moldmisery.com are removed and just the text is put into a Word document, there would be 175 pages, single-spaced. The site is not even up-to-date because the clinical material is mostly still unpublished.

Step One

So, the first issue with mold is to eliminate exposure. Basically, one can vacate the contaminated space or remediate. Many people are exposed to mold at work. One woman was deathly ill and discovered the mold was on a newspaper under a large potted plant. Employers sometimes contact me for advice in remediating and treating victims because they can be sued if they fail to protect their employees. Trust me, the law suits are not worth fighting, but let's save that discussion for another day.

If someone rents, the best solution is usually to move, but finding another place that is significantly safer is not easy. Realtors tell me that 100% of homes in Texas and Arizona are mold contaminated. I have no doubt that this is close to straight fact. The irony is that we associate mold with swampy areas, like the Everglades or Bayou, not deserts, but mold likes moisture so in deserts, that moisture is often found in the air conditioner or other cooling system.

If you own a house, I think the issue is still safety and expense. The amount of contamination in my house was relatively small, but the remediation wound up costing about $85,000. I never anticipated expenses anywhere near that high, maybe only 10% of what the expenses actually were, but sometimes houses are so badly designed and constructed that one thing leads to another. Everything might be built to code, but this means nothing.

When building, one has to start with the foundation itself and it may or may not be safe. For instance, in Ecuador, vapor barriers are rarely used and yet houses are built on the ground, no crawl space under the floor. In Washington State, vapor barriers are not required by code, but some builders install them unless they are totally unconscionable and pinching pennies. I suspect there is a reasonable life expectancy for such materials and that houses that are older will not have sufficient protection from moisture.

Contrary to the sworn testimony of many who work for defense attorneys, concrete wicks up moisture so believing it allows water to drain is folly. The warmer the weather, the more concrete acts like a sponge. Mold does not grow on concrete but it will grow on particulate matter in the pores of the concrete as well as anything in contact with the concrete such as cardboard boxes and, dare we add, framing materials.

An enormous supply of concrete sealant is very inexpensive, almost odorless, and easy to apply! It percolates down into the pores and swells up and closes off the opportunities for wicking moisture from the ground. This is really starting from the very beginning of construction, but for places that are already contaminated, the rule is you can probably perform the remediation yourself if the contaminated area is small. However, to remove larger amounts of mold, you need professionals with the right equipment. It goes without saying that this is not how the leak was managed in our rental in Ecuador.

Warnings

Not everyone is allergic to fungi, but those who are should not go near the mold. Some people are so vulnerable that they can go into anaphylactic shock. If you pour over the literature, you will find cases of instant death as well as some critical reactions to someone shelling a peanut 40 feet away from the victim. This is not easy for some people to understand. Think of a moldy orange on a kitchen counter. You want to put it down the garbage disposal but you have to pick it up to get it there. The counter has green and white powder where the orange was sitting and mold dust becomes airborne when you move the orange . . . not to mention what a joy it is for mold when you flip the switch of the garbage disposal and disseminate more spores. Mold assures its own survival by being light and easy to move with a little motion or wind.

The function of mold is to decompose. That's what it was doing on the orange or the framing materials touching the concrete, but inside your body, mold creates an immediate degenerative state. To make this very clear, everything we do, including what we breathe, what we eat, what we take by way of medicine, and what we feel and think affects our health positively or negatively. If we are supporting health, we are on a regenerative trajectory. If we are undermining health, we are promoting degeneration. Mold and maggots and all sorts of bacteria can be part of the degenerative process whereas certain herbs and foods promote regeneration. We each need to understand this in order to develop healthy life styles.

A point I have tried to make with health care professionals and sometimes patients is that mold is dangerous whether one is allergic or not. Even doctors often deny this, but I am 100% certain my contention. Some people can crawl into a contaminated space and die and others can act like it's utterly silly to worry about mold. "Look! See, I am fine, you are just obsessed about something harmless." This is the attitude of many people, including, it seems, most Ecuadorians. I am allergic to mold, not deathly allergic, meaning I do not go into anaphylactic shock, but the mold is still deadly, just not instantly so. Dr. Indunil is also allergic to mold but her symptoms are milder than mine. One of the puppies seems to be allergic but the two are equally ill though improving. Herbs are arriving in a couple of days and that will help even more.

I always start with Pseudowinthera colorata. This is an interesting Maori herb, used in somewhat the same way some Chinese and Westerners use yarrow but the observation I made in darkfield with European patients was that it eliminated mycotoxicity in the plasma. It did not seem to kill the mold. Claiming that something kills mold might be stretching the truth. Mold is almost impossible to destroy so we have to limit it, not attempt to kill it. The spores are protected by chitin, something like an oyster shell. They can be dormant for years and then suddenly become active when the conditions are right: moist, damp, and warm.

So, we can disrupt the feeding system of the spores. This is what many of the herbs in my formulas do. Mold does not have a stomach, and this is why scientists could not really determine whether mold is part of plant or animal kingdom. The problem was solved by creating a fifth kingdom for fungi. Mold, and other fungi, get their nutrition from an elaborate system of hyphae which can be miles and miles long. In physiological terms, this means that mold can plunge a hypha into the lung or brain or any other tissue and begin feeding. There are acids in the hyphae that digest the meal so the hyphae act like tubular stomachs. The hyphae have "joints" that resemble bamboo under the microscope. What I have seen is that certain herbs cause fractures to occur at the junctions and then the white blood cells attack. They seem not to be able to defend the host against the mold unless these hyphal structures are broken.

I only had a still camera on my microscope and never captured this information on video but we will be using video in the new Institute in Ecuador and, hate to ask, but we are seriously out of pocket so your support is greatly appreciated.

Now, to give this a wider context, when I was ill, a Chilean herbalist gave me Jatoba. It's quite nasty tasting, but I felt better immediately and placed an order for $2000 worth of rainforest herbs, not only for myself but for others as well. When trying to explain why the bark helped so much, I came to understand that for trees to survive humidity and insects, the bark has to contain chemicals that defend it against fungi and microorganisms and termites. We are going to be working with many herbs to determine their value for health. When I first wrote moldmisery.com, I credited jatoba with saving my life. I want to add some retrospective commentary. Jatoba appears to have some remarkable properties, but it did not stop the production of mycotoxins. However, it gave me back some energy and a bit of cognitive function, enough to enable me to bite the bullet and remediate.

It took many more years to study all the nuances of mold inhibition, mycotoxins, and tissue regeneration . . . so I will continue with Part II and Part III until the pieces fit together. I want to help others and encourage people to accept that even very serious infections can be eliminated or reversed. It is not however simple because people make mistakes and jeopardize their survival by neglecting details that they either do not understand or believe they cannot afford. To whatever extent possible, I try to make the road to health affordable, but the learning curve is very steep which is why I think patients need to be monitored and protocols needs to be tweaked.

Now, for the cup rattling. there are donate buttons on the bottom of the left-hand navigation of every page on ingridnaiman.com and on the footer of every page on invisibleepidemics.com.

Dr. Indunil will get her passport and visa on the 19th! For the record, our visa attorney told us the process takes 100-150 days. Dr. Indunil arrived in Ecuador in early July so even though the process has been tedious, it took approximately as long as we expected. She can officially begin working the moment she gets her visa so we are now looking for office space and hope to have an announcement within days.

Once Dr. Indunil receives her visa, she is permitted one shipment of belongings, up to the dimensions of a 40 ft. container. We are now acquiring lab equipment and some medical supplies, and I will be organizing a shipment soon, not remotely close to a container in size, but a shipment. Furniture is affordable in Ecuador, often beautiful and hand-made, but appliances and anything imported are astronomically expensive. We are going to send as much as we can as soon as possible. When I get my visa, I will also have an allowance, but one has to sit tight. During the time that the application is pending, one cannot leave the country so I am not going to apply until next year since I still have to come and go a couple more times.

I don't need a work permit to write so I will concentrate on publishing until I get a visa.

Many subscribers are health care providers. We are grateful for donations of equipment that is in working order.

We just had a holiday and more holidays are coming. This means that shipments take longer than usual and often entail rougher handling due to inexperienced temporary help, fatigue, and long working hours. Try to think ahead about what you need, including the alpaca from Ecuador. There are only a few blankets and ponchos left!

http://bioethikainternational.com/shop_herbs/alpaca.php

Lastly, I want to thank people for their response to the pollinator post. I ran out of bee seeds but will order more!

Since this is one of those serial posts, I want to discuss Step Two next time and explain the functions of diffusing as well as the reality of mycotoxicity.

Blessings,

Ingrid
http://invisibleepidemics.com/

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2015

Cryptococcus gattii: Pacific Northwest || Flowers and Fungi || Indoor Air Quality
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Fungi, Antibiotics, and the Immune System || Mold Control

Guduchi || Mold Chikitsa

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