Significantly Reduced Inflammation the last few days with HEPA

The last 4 days I have been carrying around the Hamilton Beach True Air that I got on Amazon from room to room keeping it near me on high. These small units must be kept on high to be effective. I have not been waking with nearly the amount of inflammation I have been used to.

What sort of began to tip me off that it may be mold residuals was that when I stayed at a friends house an hour away I would wake without the pains.

I thought I had solved the chronic pains once before but it was only temporary, so I may never know what was responsible for the chronic aches and pains of many years ago but I know as far as today goes, mold residuals are the cause for it continuing.

Killing the mold hasnt been enough or may have been not a great idea to begin with as I have read that even dead mold affects people who have become sensitive as well as dead mold releasing more toxins.

Stopping its continued growth with products has kept it from reappearing but all of my efforts to date have not been enough.

I am looking into more comprehensive HEPA units to cover a wider area of the house on a continuous basis as this seems cheaper and more feasible that a questionable remediation company.

I can be fairly certain that is mold was what triggered Lyme and Morgellon symptoms. My immune system may have been able to handle other infections all along had I not been exposed to so much mold. Mold will likely be the final thing I must deal with to fully recover.

I have read a couple interesting statements on mold tying it directly to continuous inflammation and swollen enlarged veins.

I am posting this hoping it will be useful to someone in figuring out why they arent getting better. If you suspect you have mold I would start where I did with the cheaper HEPA units and have them follow you around from room to room.

Once its confirmed then maybe consider upgrading units for rooms that you spend the most time in and using the smaller units on high for the lesser rooms. I have not witnessed a large spike in electric using these as most consumer electronics are very efficient these days.

If you are worried about electric, turn the cable box off as opposed to standby when not in use. It is the electronics supplied to you for free that are the least efficient.

As a side note I recall at least one person saying the Kratom stopped working for you.

If you are dealing with mold nothing is going to work long term other than eliminating the mold as the body will attempt to alert you somehow regardless of what you take.

This is what I have experienced with Kratom as well as Magnesium or anything else that I thought was helping. Its only a temporary mask to buy you time until you get at what is causing the problem.

ChickenArise,

Good post. I just typed a VERY long response to this and lost the whole thing (ughhhh).

I've been stalling on mold remediation for a year and a half because I learned up front from my doctor about the perils of what passes for mold remediation. I paid one of the expert CIRS remediation consultants to provide a protocol and never received it. Even if I had received it, finding a contractor who would follow it and could understand it would take an act of God IMO. I could rant here, but I'll spare you.

Bottom lines:

- Mold is serious business, especially for us and anyone with genetic susceptibility (HLA-DR).

- Standard remediation that you would get from a "mold remediator" is rarely successful in a terms of susceptible people being able to return to the environment and not react either symptomatically or as evidenced via inflammatory lab markers.

- Even proper removal of mold does not remove all the mycotoxins and mVOCs that our immune systems are reacting to. Removing these requires specialized cleaning techniques that only CIRS knowledgeable remediation consultants seem to know about or believe in. Even qualified IH folks don't get this, just like docs don't get chronic Lyme disease.

Places to Find Mold Information:
(These are direct links. There is plenty more information to be found on both these sites if you care to look for them.)

www.survivingmold.com/news/category/mold-remediation/

/www.survivingmold.com/legal-resources/environmental/mold-investigation-and-remediation

www.survivingmold.com/faq/remediation

biotoxinjourney.com/mold-testing/ plus followup article biotoxinjourney.com/category/remediation/

biotoxinjourney.com/mold-remediation-overview/

Raleighgirlie said...
Have you ever tried Modified Citrus Pectin? I have the HLA gene for lyme and mold and have been taking the Swanson brand PectiPure I bought on Amazon after reading up on mold and it's helping me. I am only taking one a day to start but will start 2 a day soon. I used to work in a building full of mold and I think this is helping bind the mold and lyme bacteria in my body and get it out finally. I highly recommend trying it if you haven't already.

I've been taking Pectasol-C by Econugenics for close to a year. I take 5-10 grams a day, usually 5. I also take 3 activated charcoal capsules a day. For a little while I was getting in a dose of binders 3x day, but for the past month or so my sleep habits have changed and I can only get 2 doses in. I can't tell if they help or not. I just sent off my sample to Realtime labs last week for a mycotoxin retest. I'll know when I get the results if anything has changed.

How can you tell the MCP is helping you?

Have you had blood tests done to identify mold illness? Did you do c4a and c3a? Hla? Which ones and what were your results?

Our house has a musty smell at times that I'm pretty sure stems from a dirt floor crawlspace under the house. Has anyone installed a vapor barrier underneath?

I recently did the environmental relative moldiness index test (ermi) thru mycometrics. To those not familiar, it's based on a house dust sample. We aren't fastidious house cleaners and we should definitely tighten it up, especially with the dusting department. I took the sample from the tops of bookshelves that hadn't been dusted in....... ahem........at least a decade.

The ermi was 10. I've read conflicting reports as to what's acceptable. I read that 10 or less is safe for mold sick people. On our house, the highly toxic species had very low scores. It was the more benign species that drove up the score.

So I don't even know if I'm mold sick. I'm feeling about 90-95% well and my neuro symptoms continue to gradually improve over time while continuing herbal tx.

What got me wondering, is my sleep patterns. We took the rv out to the southern CA desert for 3 weeks back in December & January. I slept 8-9 hours every night, falling right back to sleep after my 2:30 am pp. Now back home, I'm not sleeping quite so well. More like 6-7 hours. At home, I spend at least an hour awake after nighttime pp. While that's a big improvement over a year ago, it sure was delicious sleeping 100% normally for those 3 weeks on the road.

Its hard to know. On the same desert trip, the brain fog rolled in again when I went shopping which I attribute to the fluorescent or sodium lighting.

ChickenArise said...
Do either or both of you have visibly enlarged or bulging veins on your arms?

YES!! I do. I have huge veins on my hands and arms. I've always been embarrassed by them. I've never had pretty hands. They've always looked gnarly and old even when I was really young. I've seen ladies in their 70's with younger looking hands, and I'm in my 40's.

Does it mean something? My mother's hands look the same so I always thought it was hereditary.

ChickenArise said...

WalkingbyFaith said...

ChickenArise said...
Do either or both of you have visibly enlarged or bulging veins on your arms?

I am also looking into gassing the house with Chlorine Dioxide but it will be a while before I can accomplish this as there are no companies that do it here. Maybe it will lead to a business opportunity one day but first I must save this house or concede and move.
.

why not just get an industrial strength ozone generator and blast it a few times? it works

there are really cheap ones available on ebay with just the bare bones but they work well.

I too have the mold sensitivity and it really drives me insane sometimes.

BJD55 said...
Have you had blood tests done to identify mold illness? Did you do c4a and c3a? Hla? Which ones and what were your results?

Our house has a musty smell at times that I'm pretty sure stems from a dirt floor crawlspace under the house. Has anyone installed a vapor barrier underneath?

I recently did the environmental relative moldiness index test (ermi) thru mycometrics. To those not familiar, it's based on a house dust sample. We aren't fastidious house cleaners and we should definitely tighten it up, especially with the dusting department. I took the sample from the tops of bookshelves that hadn't been dusted in....... ahem........at least a decade.

The ermi was 10. I've read conflicting reports as to what's acceptable. I read that 10 or less is safe for mold sick people. On our house, the highly toxic species had very low scores. It was the more benign species that drove up the score.

So I don't even know if I'm mold sick. I'm feeling about 90-95% well and my neuro symptoms continue to gradually improve over time while continuing herbal tx.

What got me wondering, is my sleep patterns. We took the rv out to the southern CA desert for 3 weeks back in December & January. I slept 8-9 hours every night, falling right back to sleep after my 2:30 am pp. Now back home, I'm not sleeping quite so well. More like 6-7 hours. At home, I spend at least an hour awake after nighttime pp. While that's a big improvement over a year ago, it sure was delicious sleeping 100% normally for those 3 weeks on the road.

Its hard to know. On the same desert trip, the brain fog rolled in again when I went shopping which I attribute to the fluorescent or sodium lighting.

the sleeping thing 100% sounds like mold.

do yourself a favor and get an industrial ozone generator. use it in the crawlspace and in your house. When you do your house, do it when no one is home, blast it, then air it out thoroughly, you will be amazed at how much better is smells.

in the crawl space put it down there and just leave for hours at a time, will only help. they have bare bones units cheap on ebay, like this.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15g-20g-Ozone-Generator-Living-Air-Purifiers-Ozone-Disinfection-Machine-With-Fan/263464593645?hash=item3d57b6a8ed:m:mVjUXpwCD8vUCxxHCCBHimg

Hi,
Do your own crawlspace remediation (obv not you, but friend, or hire someone for a couple of hours).After much research the best product i found is totally natural and certified hospital grade (kills spores). It's called BENEFEcT and only contains thyme essential oil. EO's are still VOC's so you may want to stay out of the house for a day or 2 while it airs out, but I am super sensitive to VOC's and it never bothered me at all the day after. You buy a fogger for around $250 and do both the crawlspace and house interior. It's a bit of a hassle, you have to keep changing the position after 15mins so all surfaces are covered. We did it in an empty house, but I think you can leave all furniture in from memory and it will do carpets and upholstery too. As dead mold will still affect you, you need to remediate after, wiping the walls, making sure to only with on one direction and throw the cloth away.( I think we even got some benefect impregnated cloths on a roll for this part).
Re HEPA, great it's helping you, but HEPA products are extremely variable in their effectiveness. The newest method that doesn't produce any ozone (don't use these) is called Molekule. It's guaranteed to vaporize mold spores so there are no residual particles at all which could bother you. They are expensive though around $700 and you still need to move it from room to room. If you have a HVAC system make sure your filters are electrostatically charged (3M do some and it will say it on the box) as these capture more mold spores than a standard filter (even more than ones with a higher MERC rating).
I also used to have problems sleeping, waking for 7 years, almost every night around 3-5am and unable to go back to sleep. It was only after getting really sick 6 months ago (i think after staying in a house with mold) and realizing I have bartonella/lyme/mold issues that I started treating my liver detox pathways with acupuncture that I slept through the night. I am on many different herbs and nutraceuticals which have all helped but I am sure as soon as they started treating liver/gall bladder pathways I started sleeping through. Now 4 months in, I've only woken 2x. One time I had a glass of wine, and one time when doing a Tinidazole course. So I'm pretty sure it was my congested liver waking me up at this time. (My medical intuitive told me years before i got really sick that it was my liver waking me up also)

Lapis_29 said...

ChickenArise said...
Lapis,

I did and I feel it was one of the biggest mistakes that I made. Blasting it with ozone breaks it down into tiny VOC's that cannot be filtered by HEPA and trouble me just the same if not more. Cl-O2 will kill 99% of mold, bacteria and virus but there is one mold that I cant recall (Stachybotrys maybe?) which about 10% has been known to survive, but it is the closes I can get to disinfecting and will near sterilize other invaders.

Negative air pressure through HEPA is the best option and must be done either way.

but how do you use the Chlorine dioxide to disinfect the whole house?

You have to seal it up or put a fumigation tent over it. Normally the would be a Cl-O2 generator involved but this company sells a water activated product that produces it.

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS84sJKgFH8&list=PLedRB-lRUf9f6okoNzdWSwdFs3F98kPXl&index=3&t=1s

Unfortunately I dont think they responded to my inquiries. I have my doubts that I could pull this off anyway.

It would take about 12 hours of gassing the house to near sterilize it.

You want the mold to die in its whole form. Ozone breaks it into little VOC particles that cannot be HEPA filtered.

I will be buying HEPAs with as many stages as I can less ozone. Negative Ionization should be fine but I am not 100% sure.

The Benefect sounds similar to Concrobium Mold Control Spray which is also made with Thyme oil. Thyme oil is proven effective in Pub Med studies. That and a cold fogger is the preferred way to treat a mold bloom as wiping it will just send more spores everywhere.

Be vigilant as once the house has been contaminated with thousand of spores it is very difficult to avoid future problems. I feel my fighting may just be futile in the end, but I must try.