196: Dr. Jill Carnahan: Is Mold Making You Sick? Hidden Toxins, Symptoms & Detox

What if the fatigue, brain fog, inflammation, or unexplained symptoms you're experiencing aren't starting inside your body—but in the environment around you? Dr. Jill Carnahan knows this story from both sides of the exam room. At just 25, while still in medical school, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Months after aggressive chemotherapy, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. Her search for answers ultimately transformed the way she practiced medicine and led her deep into the connections between gut health, environmental toxins, mold exposure, and chronic illness. In this conversation, we unpack the hidden environmental exposures that may be affecting your health and Dr. Carnahan's "toxic bucket" theory for understanding why the same exposure can affect two people very differently. We go deep on mold toxicity and mycotoxins: where mold can hide in your home, symptoms that may warrant a closer look, why a single mold test doesn't tell the whole story, and what a more comprehensive evaluation can involve. We also discuss why detoxification needs to be approached carefully—and why doing too much too quickly can sometimes make you feel worse. In this episode, you'll learn: • How Dr. Carnahan's breast cancer and Crohn's diagnoses changed her approach to medicine • The "toxic bucket" theory and why environmental exposures affect everyone differently • Hidden sources of toxins in your home and why indoor air quality matters • Signs of potential mold exposure and how mold can be evaluated • Why one person can become sick from mold while others in the same home feel fine • How reducing exposure and supporting the body's elimination pathways fit into mold recovery We also explore air filtration, water damage, mycotoxins, glutathione, binders, sauna, phosphatidylcholine, and advanced approaches being explored in functional medicine. If you've been dealing with unexplained symptoms—or wondering whether your environment could be playing a role—this episode will help you understand what to look for and where to start. Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: www.drshah.com https://www.drshah.com Clinic: next-health.com https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: @extend_podcast and @darshanshahmd Learn more about Dr. Jill Carnahan: Website: jillcarnahan.com https://www.jillcarnahan.com/ Youtube: youtube.com/c/jillcarnahanmd https://www.youtube.com/c/jillcarnahanmd Instagram: @drjillcarnahan Thank You to Our Sponsors! Next Health Longevity Summit: Join us at Next Health Nashville Summit next-health.com/summit https://www.next-health.com/summit for a one day event of incredible speakers, activations and a wellness community like no other! Pendulum: You can go to pendulumlife.com https://pendulumlife.com and use my code EXTEND for 20% off your first order. IM8: Try IM8 today with a 30-day money back guarantee. You can get 10% off your first order with code DRSHAH at im8health.com/DRSHAH https://im8health.com/DRSHAH

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Before we get started with this episode, I'd like to invite all of you to the first ever Next Health Longevity Summit, happening in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Conrad Hotel on Saturday, September 12th, 2026. This is an all-day summit where you're going to be hearing from some of the best speakers in longevity's medicine, including Dr. Vonda Wright, Dr. Luisa Nicola, many of the podcast guests that you've heard here on the Extend Podcast, and of course, I'm going to be there, curating the entire day. We also have incredible vendors coming, so you can try the latest technologies in health, wellness, and longevity. Go to next-health.com/summit and buy your ticket today. We only have 400 spots and

• 0:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  they're going quickly. That's next-health.com/summit. I look forward to seeing you all there. Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join

• 1:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 1:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend. I'm Dr. Darshan Shah. Today, we have an extraordinary guest joining us, Dr. Jill Carnahan. Dr. Carnahan is not only a board-certified internal medicine and integrative holistic medicine physician, but also a certified practitioner with the Institute of Functional Medicine. She's another pioneer in root cause medicine, and she is known for helping patients uncover hidden imbalances behind chronic illnesses. What makes her insight so powerful is her own incredible journey, from a life-threatening illness to having vibrant health, which profoundly shaped her approach to healing. We're going to do another deep dive into functional medicine, how Dr. Jill Carnahan helps people

• 2:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  find answers to complex health problems, and the strategies that she used to address everything from toxins to chronic medical issues. Stay tuned, and you're going to learn a lot about how to apply these principles into your own health journey. Join me with Dr. Jill Carnahan.

• 2:40Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Jill Carnahan, it's such an incredible pleasure and honor to have you on the Extend Podcast. Thanks for joining me.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  You're welcome. I'm excited to be here.

• 2:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you. You know, I was on your website, and I watched the trailer to a documentary about you, which is so cool. And it just resonated so much with me, because I feel like we've had similar journeys as physicians that have gone through health struggles, and then, you know, gotten, kind of got well, and just decided to change everything to focus on this. I'd love, you know, I'd love for the audience that I have here to hear from you, like, your origin story, because it's so mind-blowing to me.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. And you know, isn't it true that we all, as healers, kind of have our own journeys? I think there's no one I know who's great in integrative personalized functional medicine, and doesn't have either themselves, or a spouse, or a child, or someone they love, that has a story. So, yeah, I'm no different. I grew up on a farm in Illinois. I was one of five children. My nurse, my mother was a nurse who retired to take care of us five kids. And, you know, mostly idyllic life on a farm with multiple acres, and a garden, fresh food, and all these wonderful things. And unbeknownst to me, that farm environment was slowly killing me. I was doing fine, didn't know anything that was going on, and I went ahead and went to medical school. I had always wanted to be some sort of a helping profession. I never thought of medicine, because there had been no one

• 4:01Speaker 01

  prior to me in my family that had been a doctor. But as I started applying to physical therapy, and acupuncture, and chiropractic, and then medical school, and getting accepted, I thought, well, why not go the route of the best reimbursed system? And notice I said not the best system, but the best reimbursed system. And what if we could actually change things from the inside out? So I kind of literally went in with the idea that I didn't agree with everything in conventional medicine, but I wanted to learn a great system, and then actually be able to hopefully change the system.

• 4:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Unbeknownst to me, though, my 30-year medical school right after my surgical rotation, we talked about breast exams, and I did a breast exam and found a lump in my breast at 25. And the rest of the story is-

• 4:41Dr. Darshan Shah?

  While you were in medical school?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  While I was in med, and just literally days after my 25th birthday. So, and this was almost a little over 20 years ago. So at that time, in my medical school in Chicago, I was at Loyola, I was the youngest woman ever diagnosed with breast cancer at that major medical center. Now, sadly, it's more common, you hear 16, 18, 24, you know, and it's still rare, but at that time, it was almost unheard of. Like, I had won the lottery, was given this diagnosis. And now I look back and understand how it helped my trajectory to be a patient, all of a sudden, in my 20s, in the middle of medical school. But at the time, it was a shock. And you see me now, 20-plus years later, healthy and vibrant, and having overcome. But at the time, it was absolutely shocking. I had no idea if

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I had six weeks or six years to live. And I was in the battle of my life. And so I became patient suddenly. I took off nine months from medical school and did three drug, very aggressive chemotherapy, lost all my hair, destroyed my gut, destroyed my ovaries. And I came out of it nine months later, considered in remission, but it was a brutal, brutal battle. And as you know, with chemo and radiation, especially aggressive therapy, it's, it's no fun. It's not for the faint of heart. But what I did learn in that journey was there was so much more than just chemo and radiation. I did a very aggressive treatment, because I was young, and they wanted to, you know, cure me. And thank goodness, they did. But I have been dealing for the past 20 years with the side effects of the treatment of my cancer. So it was quite a journey to dive into that.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  And then six months after I got back to medical school, in remission from cancer, I'm doing okay. I was still quite sick and mostly bald, because my hair had, you know, fallen out from the chemotherapy. And I was in the ER rotation, and one day I just passed out. I was taken to the emergency room, woke up from emergency surgery, and the doctor told me I had Crohn's disease. So this was all in the span of my medical training, both cancer and Crohn's disease. And what I learned in that process was, I need to figure this out, and I need to figure it out to save my own life, but also to save the lives of those future patients that were going to come see me. And so I really, really dove into the gut. That was my first foray into functional integrative medicine. And I considered,

• 6:50Speaker 01

  I'm considered curative Crohn's as well, but it was not without a lot of hard work. And I really learned the gut at that time as well. So lots of early journeys into the depths of healing as a patient.

• 7:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah. And as a medical student, like, it's this mind-blowing that, you know, this all happened to you in such a short period of time during your life. Do you think there's something that maybe set you up for getting some of these diseases at such an early age?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I love solving mysteries. And now, looking back, it starts to become clear. So I mentioned I grew up on a farm. Back in the 70s and 80s, when I was a very young child, they were still using atrazine, which is a known endocrine disruptor. It's banned in Europe, and it is still, to this day, being used in the cornfields of Illinois. And that atrazine, I think, had, among other chemicals, probably were in the well water that I drank, probably even in utero exposure from my mother, who probably also had exposure on the farm. And in hindsight, I had a very poor detoxification system. I had exposure to endocrine disruptors. Who knows if mold was involved? And then there was also some kind of unique things for me. I was an undiagnosed celiac disease until in my 30s. So I'd been

• 7:57Speaker 01

  eating gluten, not knowing any better. I had a zinc deficiency, B12 deficiency, some nutritional issues. So all of those things, I think, when you look at it, the genetics, the poor detox, the exposure to chemicals, and then the undiagnosed gut issues, led to this perfect storm that allowed me to get DNA corruption of my breast tissue and cancer at 25.

• 8:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah. And you know, you're in medical school, and, you know, I don't know how long ago you went to medical school, but when I went to medical school, if you even talked about gut health and toxins and stuff, no one knew what you were talking about. Did you find some resistance when you were kind of talking about what was happening to you in some of the detector work that you were doing? How did you find that the community around you reacted to that?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Oh, Dr. Shah, I'll never forget. And I tell this in my story all the time now, because now it almost seems funny. First of all, the word microbiome never really came into the literature until around the time, 20 years ago, when I was diagnosed. It's quite a new term, even though now, of course, like, we talk all day long about the microbiome in the heart, and the microbiome in the brain, and the microbiome in the, every organ in the body is affected by this. But at the time, back in the day, in medical school, we didn't really realize how closely they were tied. And then, second, I never forget, I had this diagnosis of Crohn's, and so they said, of course, you're going to need lifelong immune-modulating drugs. You're going to need, right now, steroids, maybe antibiotics, because I had an abscess, that's how I was diagnosed. I had surgical resection, you know, so I had all this thing that basically was the diagnosis. The surgeon comes out and says, you have Crohn's, and you're going to need to follow with a gastroenterologist.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  So I was obedient. I went and followed up a few weeks later with a GI doc at Loyola. And I'll never forget sitting there, and at the end of the spiel of lifelong drugs, immune-modulating drugs, this is incurable, this very kind of hopeless spiel about Crohn's disease, and I'm listening intently. And at the end, he said, do you have any questions? And I said, yes, doctor, I would like to be part of the process. I'll do whatever it takes. I said, what can I do with my diet? Does diet, you know, like, how do I change my diet so that it can be more helpful for this Crohn's disease? He did not even pause, and he said, Jill, diet has nothing to do with this disease.

• 9:56Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, my gosh. Wow.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  And even then, I was a very, like, naive medical student, who was giving this authority to this gastroenterologist that I trusted. But what I knew in my heart, and this is what I tell patients all the time, and for your listeners, too, there was something that didn't align. It was, it was disingenuous. And I knew that could not be true. In my heart of hearts, in my intuition, I didn't know a lot. I was like, there is no way a gut immune disorder is not related in some way to the diet. And I just didn't know how untrue that was. But I dove, and it was almost like that German-Swiss stubborn part of me started to be like, ah, I'm going to prove him wrong. And I did. I literally went, and I next found Elaine Gottschall's Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which was one of the oldest books in the world about Crohn's and colitis, because she is, and a nurse had

• 10:42Speaker 01

  realized that taking out certain disaccharides and monosaccharides actually helped her patients with Crohn's and colitis. Go figure. Probably because of the underlying SIBO and disorders that were related. So I had nothing to lose, and I started on that diet. And within two weeks, I had had cyclical fevers. I had had bleeding, diarrhea, weight loss. Almost all of my symptoms were gone. Now, I was not cured in two weeks, but it was just enough of a massive aha to be like, wait, diet has everything to do with this, right?

• 11:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's mind blowing. You know, I did a surgery residency and I operated on a lot of people with Crohn's disease. And you know, you give people with Crohn's disease so many antibiotics, you give them so many immune modulating medications, and you just destroy people's immune system trying to like relieve the symptoms. When it just seems so silly now that's like, why don't we remove the thing that's causing the immune system to go crazy in the first place, right? Which is dietary interventions. And so it's, it just, and it's sad, though, that even now, I bet you, there are doctors still thinking that diet has very little to do with Crohn's disease.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's like prednisone, flagell and cipro, right? Like, that's what we do. Or budesonide, now this newer non-derol steroid. So we do these things. And again, there's nothing wrong with stabilizing. At the time, I needed that. But just like you said, there's so much deeper. And I always tell people, basically, what we know now is Crohn's disease is an abnormally aggressive response to a normal microbiome. And then in tune with permeability in this. And so someone like me, I actually have a gene called NOD2 that makes me at high risk for this aggressive, it's almost like my immune system's a little bit more upregulated. So it was aggressively responding to, and you think back, this is going to make perfect sense to you. So I was going along, eating gluten, didn't know I have silent celiac, and then

• 12:31Speaker 01

  cancer, and three of the drugs, cytotoxin, 5FU, and doxirubicin. And the cytotoxin literally works by creating a more permeable gut. So it is a perfect storm, because all of a sudden, I get dumping of the bacterial coatings, the LPS in my gut immune system, and creating this aggressive response in a leaky gut, which was caused partially by the chemotherapy. And then, of course, someone who's already genetically predisposed, these bacterial toxins called lipopolysaccharides are in the blood, triggering this aggressive immune response. And in me, that caused the Crohn's lesions. And just like makes so much sense, doesn't it?

• 13:06Dr. Darshan Shah?

  It makes total sense. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, like, it was always very much a mystery to me when we treated people with breast cancer. I also did a lot of breast cancer surgery. Why they would just start having terrible gut issues after being on. And, you know, you just broke it down for us. That's exactly why. And so these chemotherapeutic agents, they're very aggressive forms of some of the chemicals that we're constantly putting into our body, almost every day anyway, right? Through the foods that we eat, through the antibiotics that we take, etc. And we're causing these massive immune flare ups and reactions just from, from chemicals all the time attacking our gut.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, people have no idea how the food supply is adulterated. And unless you're very conscious of what you put in your mouth, and you're eating out a lot, and I'm not even talking fast food, I'm just talking like normal oils in restaurants and things, even in pretty good restaurants, we have no idea the amount of plastics and PFAs. If you take takeout, for example, every container that you take takeout food in has polyfluorinated compounds in it. And I could go on and on, but we're not aware, until we're aware, of the toxic load that every day we get exposed to.

• 14:14Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, it's really mind blowing. And so I always, you know, I think toxins to me is one of those pillars of health next to diet, sleep, and exercise. Like, I put it right up there, right? And it's really that important. It's really hard for people to understand why it's that important, because most of this is invisible. It doesn't, you can't smell it, you can't touch it, you can't see it. And so how do you talk to your patients about toxins in general and avoiding toxins? Do you have a framework that you use?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So first thing I always think about, and then I teach to the patients, is the bucket concept. So we're all born with a bucket capacity to detox. Like, we are detox machines. So even though this can be a very depressing topic, our bodies were created kidneys and liver, like all of our organs, they're detox machines. And so we're meant to have some exposures, and to be able to filter our urine through the kidneys, and then, you know, expel it out. That's a blood filtered, and the urine is what we expel, and then filter through the stool, the things through the liver. And so we actually have in place things to get rid of chemicals. But the truth is, is we're all born with a capacity. I happen to have a very small bucket because of genetics around glutathione, and SOD, and all these things, meaning the toxic load that would fill up my bucket and lead to the three big

• 15:28Speaker 01

  things that we see with toxic overload, which is some sort of autoimmune disease, cancer, which is my breast cancer, and then neurodegenerative diseases. Those are the three most common. And also, surprise, surprise, all three are massively increasing in incidence now, because we're toxic load. So someone like me, very small bucket, my bucket started to fill an overload capacity to keep up with that detox. So if you think about you're bailing the water out of the bucket, also you reach a threshold, it starts to spill over the top. And that's when, whether you're 25 or 65, you're presenting in the doctor's office with some sort of autoimmune that could be lupus, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, or any number of autoimmune reactions. It could be cancer, like my breast cancer, or any number of other. And it could be neurodegenerative. And certainly, there's many other things that

• 16:13Speaker 01

  can happen. But those are the big ones, and people relate to it because it's common in the world. Many people know someone with cancer, or Crohn's, or neurodegenerative, meaning like Parkinson's, or ALS, or Alzheimer's. So that bucket capacity is what we're given. And what we need to do is keep that water level down. So if we're constantly thinking about either reducing inputs, or revving up, or aiding our body to eliminate the bucket, to bail it out, we're going to be in good shape. But if we're not conscious about that, that bucket can fill up very early, like it did for me in my twenties, and as it spills over the top. So what we want to do is just bring that water level down, just enough so that there's margin. Because when there's margin, our bodies will detoxify. And people,

• 16:53Speaker 01

  for example, don't realize that 80% of our environmental toxic load is the air that we breathe. So just today, as I'm breathing, in my, you know, office here, there could be nanoparticulate from exhaust, there could be VOCs, offgassing from the countertops, or the flooring, the formaldehyde. There could be mold in a room where you're getting mycotoxins, and any number of things that are invisible, and we don't even recognize. But our alveolar is so porous, that when there's these small VOCs, mycotoxins, viral particles, they go right into our bloodstream, and they cause problems.

• 17:29Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yep, absolutely. Yeah, this, the air piece of this is extremely important. And that's the most invisible to most people. I think when I talk about air toxins, most people think, well, pollution. And they think just because, you know, if they live in a city, then they have more exposure to air toxins. And I try to correct people. It's like, no, most of the toxins are actually coming from inside your house, and inside your office environment. That's where, in fact, you know, even if you live in some populated area, sometimes it's better to open the window than to not, right?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yes, so true. Because as I say, dilution is the solution to pollution. And when we, and especially, you know, nowadays, back in the old days of a log cabin that had cracks in the walls, that was actually better than a lead certified downtown high rise that is so efficient, there is no air exchange, or the air exchange that they have isn't from the outside, you're recycling. And some of those buildings that are super efficient, and the way we build are actually way more toxic, because we're putting all these materials up, we're not thinking about the offgassing from new build materials. And it is very common for people to get sick from a new build, just because of the offgassing of the materials used to the build.

• 18:36Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, that new building smell, or new house smell, or new car smell, that's not good for you. Right? That is offgassing of chemicals from these, from new furniture, etc.

• 18:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Dr. Shah here, and I want to take a quick moment to talk to you about metabolism. So you've probably already heard, unfortunately, 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And it's not because of what they're eating. It's actually a lot about what's living in your gut. I'm talking about your microbiome. This is the community of bacteria that controls everything, from how you process sugar, to your energy levels, to your mood. There's actually one specific strain in your microbiome called Akkermansia mucinophilia. That's absolutely critical for metabolic health. This is a bacteria that strengthens your gut lining, and helps you metabolize carbs more efficiently, and it increases GLP-1 production naturally.

• 19:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  The problem is, almost everybody is completely deficient in it. And until recently, there was no way to get this. But that's why I'm really excited about joining Pendulum. They're the first company in the US to bring live Akkermansia to the market. The company was founded by PhD scientists and doctors, with the Mayo Clinic as their first investor. The metabolic daily formula that I take every single day doesn't just contain Akkermansia, it's formulated with multiple next generation strains. And these all work together to optimize your metabolism from the inside and out. So you can track every macro and calorie if you want. But if your gut microbiome is out of balance, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. Pendulum is going to give you the tools that you need to fix your gut at

• 20:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  its source. Try Pendulum today. Head to my link below, and use the discount code. You're going to feel the difference a healthy gut microbiome can make.

• 20:32Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So you know, what is the solution here then? I think, you know, I mentioned one, open your windows as much as possible. I have people check their quality index outside. If it's in the green, open your windows, right? But what are some of the other solutions people can have to like, make sure that they reduce the amount of environmental toxins are ticking into their lungs?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I always say clean air, clean water, clean food, and clean air is where we're starting. But I love that frame because if you're talking environmental toxic load, it can be completely overwhelming. And it can maybe depressing because we're all swimming in toxic soup and it's only getting worse. So I talk about microwave popcorn and takeout and inside of cans and on and on and on and plastics and bottled water. And it gets to be pretty depressing, but the air quality is something we have a lot of control over. So let's start with the home. First thing is we, most people have an HVAC system that circulates air. And having that cleaned, if you've never had it cleaned at least once, and maybe once every five years or so, if you live in your house a long time, that can get many homes, like this home I just moved into, I just moved out a long ago, and it's an eight-year-old home.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  The HVAC system was never cleaned, so I cleaned it, of course, right before I got in. And there was debris and dust and even like pieces of wood from the construction that are still in my vents. So that cleaning of the HVAC system, and then we all have the filters in our furnace system if we have an HVAC. And you want to get the highest MERV rating that you can allow in there. You're going to decrease efficiency of airflow just slightly. Some of the HVAC guys are like, oh, my gosh, you're going to have to change this. You're going to spend more money. But to me, it's well worth it for a thicker MERV. And that could be 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. 16 is about the highest and a lot of times filters, it's hard to get above 12 or 14, but whatever you can get above like eight, you want to get higher, the better. That's going to filter. Some of them have charcoal in them. Some of them have an allergen level rating.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  And that's going to be key. And then put an alarm on your phone to change no less than every three months. Some people change it as soon as every month. Maybe you have two furnaces or you need to change them both. Second thing would be standalone filters. I think these are so crucial. IQ Air, Austin Air, Air Doctor, there's a number of them, but what you want to make sure, in fact, right beside me, I have an Austin Air, and there's many other good brands, right? But you want to make sure that it has a HEPA filtration. HEPA is the standard air filtration. It filters particulate. So like your spores and your dust and your things that are almost visible, very important, and all filters have that. However, what you want is also something like the ones I mentioned, have a VOC filter. VOC is volatile organic compounds. These are mycotoxins, formaldehyde, smoke, exhaust or wildfire smoke.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And all of those things are going to be like a carbon central filter with zeolite or carbon or charcoal or clay, which actually traps these, normally they're like odors, they're invisible to the eye. And they're smaller than 2.5 microns, which is the size of a virus. So if you have a HEPA filter with a VOC, you could actually trap viruses in that as well and decrease the viral load in a, like a sick building or a hospital or something like that. So the standalone filters, I recommend every 1,500 square feet of your house, you have at least one large standalone filter. If it's your bedroom, that's another good place to spend on a filter. And then, just like you said, checking the air quality. Right now, I'm in Colorado. It's not too bad, but frequently we have wildfires.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  My family in Illinois is getting that smoke from the Canadian wildfires all the way down into Chicago area. And when those levels are really high, the outdoor air is actually more toxic. So you, if you are going outside, you need an N95 or N100 mask to screen that particulate. And what many people don't know is wildfire smoke, which is sadly becoming more and more common, is just as toxic as mold. I mean, it is so toxic. You have rubber and plastics and metals and things that we're literally inhaling. And it is so, so toxic and people have no idea how inflamed and toxic that can be.

• 24:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Oh, wow. I had no idea that, well, you know, I live in Southern California. We have fires, sadly, all the time here. And the last fire ran through Palisades, which is a huge community. And I mean, the air was horrible and it still is suffering because of all of the, you know, the stuff they have in our homes that are burning and that air is lies and you breathe.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  That's it. If you think about the plastic decks and the things that we have, a lot of it is actually chemicals and plastics. And back in the day, again, a log cabin might have been okay. But nowadays, we have a lot of, or metal from a washer dryer that literally gets melted and burned in. Or cars that burn and the fuel and there's just on and on and on. I didn't realize, so we had in Louisville, Sperry, where I used to live, there was a big fire in, I think, 2021. And destroyed one of the biggest home damage, thousands of homes. And after that, I was checking patients in our area. And what I saw was the same type of lab abnormalities, like elevations in MMP9, TGF beta, and other innate immune markers that were just as bad or worse than when they had mold exposure.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So I started realizing, just from seeing the labs of people who are living in homes that had had some, you know, smoke damage, that I was like, wow, this is just as bad or worse than a home with toxic mold. And everybody in the community was experiencing it.

• 25:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really crazy. And so I think the, the moral of the story here is like you mentioned the bucket theory, right? And your bucket has a lot to do with your genetics, how full your bucket already is. And the idea here is just to keep as much stuff out of the bucket as possible because no matter what, we're all going to be exposed to toxins, right? They're just, it's just the world we live in. The less your bucket fills, the better. And so if you can be mindful about getting air, your fire is opening the windows every once in a while, closing them when there's a wildfire in the area, like these, these maneuvers help reduce the amount of toxins in that bucket, is what you're saying.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yes, and some of this is not super expensive, not super difficult. And even changing your air filters, it's not cost prohibitive for most people. So I love it because it's very accessible to 95% of the population.

• 26:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I want to talk a little bit about mold too, since we're on the topic of indoor air. Is, you know, I live in also like, you know, in California, there's a lot of mold here. And a lot of times we see people with weird symptoms, like they're tired all the time or they have headaches all the time. And, you know, I ask them, do you have mold in your home? And they're like, no, I don't, I don't have mold. But the reality is, when we do their toxin tests, we see a lot of mold. And so this is another invisible problem that I think a lot of people are ignoring. And could you, like, how much mold do you see where you're at? And how do you talk to people about mold?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you just hit on such an important point. If we just point blank say, do you have mold in your home? 99% of people are like, no, it's fine, right? So you have to be a little sneaky in a healthy way, right, about how you ask. So usually I'm, I'm like, well, on your labs, I see some signs of inflammation. So I'm concerned that there could be water damage. I use that term. Because all of a sudden, they start to think. And I would say, do you ever recall, has there been a dishwasher leak? Was there a shower that didn't get sealed? Do your kids play in the tub and splash water into the tile? Have you actually sealed the grout? Most people don't know they have to seal the grout over a few years. Was there ever an intrusion like a ceiling where there's a tile that's just colored or a leak through the ceiling or the attic? How is it insulated? Is there condensation? Where does your dryer vent? Is there condensation on the windows? Has a window ever leaked?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And I could go on and on, foundational issues. Is there sweating on the foundation? Is there water in your basement? Do you have a sump pump? And so I'll start to ask these questions. And if you just start, like, I've learned, I'm not an inspector, but I could look at a house. Funny, I was just saying, I just bought a house. I looked at 40 homes. And I looked, and I'm really getting good at like looking into things, looking for signs that the wood is warping or the floor is pumping up a little. Or, and you look around fridges, you look around dishwashers, you look around these things. And if you ask those kinds of questions, most people have a story. We're like, oh, yeah, our basement flooded and we, you know, stopped with the water and got it all taken care of and then it was fine. And I'm like, well, how do you know for sure?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  And even back in 2013, Boulder had a massive flood. It just covered up half the city. And there was some very unscrupulators, remediators coming into the city and did a very poor job. So even now, like offices and homes, there's a lot of moldy buildings in Boulder, Colorado because of that. And it's older damage that wasn't repaired properly or wasn't remediated properly. So asking those questions and then also the timeline. So one of the free things you can do yourself at home, or if you're with a doctor like me or Dr. Shaw, we'll say, do you remember feeling really good? Like, when was the last time that you felt great and vibrant and got up and your brain worked and everything felt good? You loved life. I'll say, yeah, 10 years ago. I said, well, what happened 10 years ago?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, it was right after we moved to, you know, Colorado Springs that I started not feeling well. And then I might ask about the pets and I might ask about the children. Well, yeah, Joey got asthma when he was 12. It was right after we moved. And my husband started having chronic sinus issues and then I developed lupus two years later. I mean, something like that. And my eyes are, my eyebrows are raising and I'm like, well, there's a timeline here that's related to a change in environment. So there, could there be something? Now, it's not always mold. It could be, you know, radiation from a bunch of cell towers near the home, or you never know. There's all kinds of other things. But when I get a story where something happened and the family, more than one people were affected, although genetically, you can have one person in the family be affected and the other people be okay. So it's not always that way.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  But that history is so key and people can often pull back and look at, when did they last feel well? And then figure out from that timeline, what happens?

• 29:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, and you mentioned something really important. I just want to highlight it. A lot of my patients tell me, well, I don't think I have mold. None of, no one in my family is sick. Why am I the one getting sick from the mold, right? And just because your family members aren't getting sick, doesn't mean it's not there. It means, to your point, that bucket theory where your toxic bucket is smaller for some reason, or it's overfull for some reason. And everyone obviously has a different lifestyle that fills their toxic bucket differently. And so just because you live with somebody that is not sick, you can still get sick from mold.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And you might have like, you know, maybe the husband has just a little bit of congestion and allergies very mild. And the wife has chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and lupus, you know, they could be this very different picture. Because everybody presents differently because it's our immune response to the mold. And usually it's literally this inability to eliminate an antigen like a mycotoxin in certain people. So their toxic load increases. They can't eliminate this. And then it creates this loop that creates damage to the cells.

• 30:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, exactly. And, you know, when you're searching for mold in somebody, what are the tests that you're using? And how do you try to prove or disprove whether they have mold toxins or not?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, great question. This is probably the one of those popular one I get on Instagram and social media, like, what's the one test for mold? So like I said, I always love to start with a story because the story tells a lot. And so I never forget the history, even though we're doing labs. And I never do the labs without knowing the history because they go together. One thing that's free and easy and people can access from online even, we do it in our office. It's visual contrast testing. And I like that because once again, it's something that doesn't cost a lot of money. It can be free online done and it tests the light and dark sensitivity of the retina. And that can go awry very quickly in the early days of biotoxins. So it's not diagnostic, but if you have a normal, an abnormal visual contrast screen, there's a more likelihood that you have a mold exposure.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  And then second, I do urinary mycotoxins, but I don't judge everything by them because that could be a past exposure or body burden. There's many reasons why it could be positive without an acute home exposure. But it is helpful to get a baseline and then compare family members. And I like to do a urinary mycotoxins and then also a dust sample in the home and actually compare to see if I see the species that are in the home in the patient's urine. I'm more likely to say this is probably a real issue. And then we have these innate immune markers. We talked about the innate immune system and the marrow growth that happens with the toxic exposure and the innate immune response and this, you know, vicious cycle that occurs. So there's markers, we used to call them Sears labs from the old Shoemaker protocol

• 32:29Speaker 01

  and things like VEGF, TGF beta, MMP nine, ADH normality, anti-gliadin antibodies, MSH. And these are all innate immune markers. And if all of them are abnormal, higher or low depending on the ranges, we can induce that there's some innate immune dysfunction and frequently it's mold.

• 32:47Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right. Yeah. So just, just to summarize that exactly, the visual contrast testing is a free test. You can do it online a lot of times and that's an indicator. Testing your home, so like even taking a dust sample, there are a lot of companies, you can mail that in and they'll tell you if it grows mold or not and what species they are. There's a urine test where we look for toxins that your body's trying to get rid of. And then lastly, there is these blood tests that you can do, developed by Shoemaker and other doctors that point to an immune system being overly activated by mold.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 33:22Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That's a good summary, right? And so I think the reason I wanted to highlight this is because a lot of times, I think people go to get evaluated for mold and they only get one test, which is a urine test, right? And there's, there's, there's something wrong with that because it can definitely lead you either for getting treated for something that is not currently a problem or you're missing it, right?

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly. And I see again, social media is out there. If you're like, oh my gosh, positive urine toxin test, I have got to leave my home and sell everything in it. Like, no, wait, you know, and I always get a little disturbed by that because I think there are people with lesser degrees that don't really understand the innate immune system and are giving patients false advice to leave everything. And, you know, and sometimes it's an old exposure and sometimes it's not. I mean, there's so many explanations, you want to follow up with that, but you don't want to make a whole decision based on just one test.

• 34:11Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, absolutely.

• 34:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Hi, Dr. Shaw here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics, I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells you see are like phones and they have limited cellphone battery. Poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with IM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity.

• 35:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection. The clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IM8 actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IM8 had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station, San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health. Most people are aging twice as fast as they should, unfortunately.

• 35:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You don't have to be one of them. Try IM8. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to drshah.com/IM8 or go to im8health.com/discount/drsaw and you can get 20% off with my discount code, DrShaw. You can also find the link below.

• 36:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, you know, I think the treatment for this, for mold specifically, is that you want to avoid and get rid of the cause, right? Like you want to, you want to get away from the mold, you want to get rid of it, get rid of it from your house, et cetera. Obviously that's what you want to do, but are there things that people can do to also kind of push the elimination of these toxins out of their body?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you hit the nail on the head. It always starts with a get out of the exposure because otherwise you're bailing out a leaky boat and you, you may make some headway. I never stop treating or not treat patients who are in exposure, but you're not going to get as far and you're never going to really get well if you have a significant ongoing exposure. So rule number one, you have to fix the problem. And again, that takes more than you and I as MDs, we need environmental experts. So there's nonprofits like I S E A I, International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illness that has, they call them IEPs, indoor environmental professionals that are experts in this. So you want to get an expert, whether it's a remediator, inspector, or whatever, that can help you find the problem and solve that.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  And then you can actually enhance detoxification, which is helpful for this. So these are tissue based liposoluble toxins. So basically they are stored in the fat and mycotoxins do that. So you need to go backwards and you need to mobilize them from the tissues and then excrete them. And things that can do that would be dry brushing, infrared sauna, movement, exercise, sweating, and then glutathione in any form or precursors of glutathione like NAC, lysine, glutamine, and other things can enhance that production of the liver so that you have phase one, phase two, you're actually eliminating these. And then binders, I'm a huge fan of, and that would be things like clay or charcoal or well called glycominon, colistaramine, there's prescription and non-prescription binders.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And that combination tends to get people well, it just takes some time. The average patient, probably four to six months and it can be longer.

• 38:04Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Uh huh. Yeah, exactly. I think it's a really good combination of ways to help. And then there's some of these advanced therapies that I'm sure you're also doing as a functional medicine physician. How do you feel about EBO and how do you feel about plasma exchange? And some of these more advanced detoxification, like I would say, you know, procedures that can be done in a clinical setting? And are there others that you do?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So all of these, so the basics are the basics. And I always still start with the basics because you want to make sure you're moving, you're sweating, you're sleeping, you're eating, you're clean air, clean water, clean food. That's always the basic, but these things can be really helpful and we didn't always have such powerful tools. So things like IV PC, which is phosphatidylcholine can be like a cellular membrane exchange and the membranes are definitely damaged by mold. But that can also dump toxins and it kind of has to be in order. You want to start the detox before you add PC. You mentioned plasma exchange, I'm a huge fan. We actually have a company in my clinic that does that. And we just had incredible success over five treatments, so one per month. What happens is you pull out from the plasma, all of the toxins, and then the body starts to equilibriize after that exchange over three weeks.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  And so then by the fourth week, when they're getting their second exchange, the toxic load from the tissues has gone back into the plasma. You take another load out, like dump truck, take it out and then try again. And over five treatments, which is kind of where we've landed for an ideal, which is five months. So every month a plasma exchange, those levels can go down by like 95% and remain that level of low for up to three years, as long as the patient doesn't get more exposure. So it's highly effective, it's expensive, so it's not for everyone. And then you mentioned EBO, EBO, I felt the extracorporeal oxygenation, ozonation. The one caveat there is a lot of times mold creates a lot of reactive oxygen. And in someone like me with impaired SOD, I am very sensitive to ROS.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  And so ozone types of therapies, even hyperbaric can be too much for my system because I can't neutralize that reactive oxygen, but that's not everyone. Some people do amazing with it, it's just the right patient. And those who don't or who deal with oxidative stress better. One little pearl there is hydrogen inhaled or as tabs can neutralize ROS. So you can, someone like me could just use inhaled hydrogen to offset that ROS that's created with EBO or ozone therapies.

• 40:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Wow, that's awesome. Joe, you're incredible, like you can like spout out the entire protocol like so easily and make it so understandable for people. But this is pretty much a protocol I like to use for, for mold patients as well. And I did just think, you know, you don't have to do everything and the sequencing is so important. And you do, can do parallel paths of, you know, treatment, reducing the mold and trying to find the mold and then also reducing your overall toxic burden all at the same time to just increase the size and capacity of that bucket. And I just think it's, it's complicated, it's involved. A lot of people are trying to DIY it, I think as well, you know? And you probably see that a lot on your Instagram. It's just so important to have a really knowledgeable provider take you through this. What do you think?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I could not agree more. And by all means, I am the biggest advocate for getting education out there for people to be their own advocates. I love to do that, but what I've seen too many times is that patients go all in and they get very, very sick because they're mobilizing far greater than they already have the capacity to excrete. That's actually a worse outcome because think about, again, just forward, backward. How we get this is we inhale, these toxins are so small, they'll be like, I have no barrier. So within seconds of inhalation in a moldy building, that is in our blood. The blood then deposits in the tissue and there's this equilibrium between tissue load and blood load. And they don't really stay in the blood. So then you there for five years or three years or two years and your tissue has a very high load. Then to get this out of the body, we're going backwards.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  We're mobilizing that out of the tissues, dry brushing, Epsom salt baths, infrared sauna, glutathione, mobilizing that back into the blood and we have to filter that now to get it out. So the kidneys have to work, the liver has to work. And if you think about it, if you mobilize so much that your blood is loaded with mycotoxins, you get, you can get very sick, rashes, brain fog, fatigue and on and on and on. And many people go so quickly that they get incredibly sick and they can hardly do life. And it's not, that's not healthy and it's not safe.

• 42:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right, absolutely. Yeah, this concept of mobilization is really important. And this is one of the reasons it's really important to work with a provider because if you release mobilization, the definition is releasing the toxins that is accumulated in your organs back into your bloodstream for elimination. And to your point, like if you put too many toxins in your bloodstream at the same all at once, you're going to have problems because you're gonna you'll get sick from it. There'll be an activation of your immune system, et cetera. And so there's a lot you can do to mobilize toxins, but ask to be done very thoughtfully.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yes, love that. Couldn't agree more.

• 42:52Dr. Darshan Shah?

  You know, one of the places that people store toxins is in their fat, right? And so one of the things that we've been talking to people about is um um doing certain therapies and and treatments to mobilize the toxins out of their fat. I think GLP-1s can actually be helpful there as well. There's some like certain radio frequency technologies that um help break up fat cells as well. So that's also could be part of the equation.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree more. And I'm a huge fan of GLP-1s at very small doses for patients. We didn't even touch on, but mast cell activation syndrome is becoming epidemic and the number one cause is mold. Now, not every patient with mast cell activation has mold, but many of them have mold. And what I've found is very low doses of GLP-1s, semaglutide, tirzoparate, and someday ritortriptide, when it's legal, is going to be incredibly powerful. They already have. And I would say eighty to ninety percent of my patients are in incredibly small doses, but it can calm the inflammation and help stabilize those cells. And actually, there's some case studies now published on mast cell activation and GLP-1. So it can be very, very helpful.

• 43:54Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, you know, GLP-1s have so many effects. There's GLP receptors on the immune cells and liver cells and brain cells and gut cells. It's way beyond just weight loss. It's can be extremely helpful. Can you tell us a little bit more about IV phosphatidylcholine and how that helps as well?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Patricia Kane was the one who made this all real famous. She has some protocols and she has got some of the best information that was out there. And phospholipids are the cell to cell membranes. So around every cell, these phospholipids are like lipid bilayers. They have these like legs. And when that gets gets exchanged, for example, if you eat a bunch of trans fats or fake fats or things, it gets very stiff and we can't signal from cell to cell very easily. So neurotransmitters and cell signaling is all impaired. Mold can also cause sticky cell membranes. So phosphatidylcholine is a way to exchange the toxic cell membranes for healthy lipid flowing. If you think about the legs kicking, which are like the example, the lipid bilayer, um, this is a really healthy way to exchange. I mentioned before, you do want to be order of operations because

• 44:53Speaker 01

  if you exchange that, you're once again, you're mobilizing a whole lot of toxic load. And phospholipids also help transport things from gut lumen into the blood, which means if you already have a very permeable gut and you dump in phosphatidylcholine without healing the gut, you could dump a lot of lipopolysaccharides into the blood, too. So there's a time and a place. It's powerful treatment. I'm a huge fan. And you can do oral as well as IV. Oh, I think although I think IV is probably a little bit more powerful in nature.

• 45:20Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yes, yes. What oral phosphatidylcholines do you use?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, I just like Body Biopc. It's one of my favorites.

• 45:28Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm using too, yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:30Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, I I have no like financial relationship with the company, but I just wonder like what people use out there because it is, you know, there's something new. You have to talk to people about why it's important. I've been using Body Biopc, yes.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And and it brand, I think brand does matter. I'm like you. I don't have an affiliation, but the quality matters, right? We'll just say it that way.

• 45:48Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, the quality matters. With your the supplements that you're using to help also treat mold and bind and all of that, is there a certain protocol or brand that you like to use for that?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so um, I've been a real fan of the research nutritionals that Trifortabite because it tastes great for kids and stuff. They have a watermelon and an orange flavored. It's a liposomal. Um, Quicksilver has a little pump that's nice. It's not a super high dose, but it's a very easy um dosing. Um, and then esasalglutathion can be great enzyme agent and orthomolecular and some of those companies have that. That works well as a capsule. So it kind of depends on the person. I would say that the liposomes are probably slightly more effective. There's also a newer one I really like called Swish Glutathion that's made with a liposome that is absorbed. You just literally swish it. That one tastes kind of sulfury, but I actually, that's what I use personally. I really like that for me because it's one of the most gentle for those patients like myself who

• 46:40Speaker 01

  are really, really sensitive. Um, and then you can also use precursors. So amino acids like glutamine and glycine and cysteine are the foundational blocks of glutathione. So in the most sensitive patients, like back when I had mold really badly, I couldn't tolerate glutathione for the first six months. So I used NAC and glycine and glutamine instead. And I did got to the same end. Um, and then you want some liver support. So milk thistle is a mainstay for most of my patients. Bitters or bile acid secretagogues are huge because that bile acid is where you're storing that. You want that gallbladder and liver to secrete the bile and move it out of the gut. And then you use the binders to actually grab onto the bile acid or bile acid binders like colesjarmine or colesalvan or any of

• 47:21Speaker 01

  the prescription binders um to pull that bile out through the stool, which is loaded with toxins as well.

• 47:27Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. That that's a fantastic list. Thank you. And you just to wrap up on mold, I I also know that, you know, a lot of people focus really on like the mold as in your homes, the mold toxin that you're breathing in. Um, how serious are the molds that you ingest? The mold, you know, because this can occur on like nuts and coffee and all sorts of um on food items that we store in our pantries for a long time. Can these also lead to similar problems?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a great question. So first of all, the studies that we have from forty years ago are livestock studies because farmers knew when their grain like corn or or soy or anything was contaminated with mycotoxins, hay for the horses, super common to have problems with the livestock. They would have gastritis or they'd have immune issues or they'd have whatever else. So the farmers a long time ago started studying this because it was affecting their livelihood, right? So a lot of the early studies were ingestion of mold with livestock and animal studies. And so many times, people who don't really understand the physiology of mold in humans and sick building syndromes will say, well, it's just ingestion. We don't have, or for example, someone gets a mycotoxin test that's positive in the urine. Oh, you just ate moldy food, which could be true, but things

• 48:36Speaker 01

  like aflatoxin and ochratoxin, while they might be in peanuts, tricosahenes like rodin or or sarotoxin, those are not in foods typically. So it's very rare to have the black mold in food. So there is a difference. And the difference between ingestion is we ingest it into our gut, is absorbed into the bloodstream. The liver filters it with first past, which means we have to have a really good filter that protects us and protects our tissues when we ingest it. It's not nearly as toxic. And as I mentioned with alveoli and the inhalation, there's no filter in the alveoli. So seconds of inhalation will get a toxic load immediately in the bloodstream. So inhalation tends to be a far more toxic route. And typically, when someone gets really sick from mold in a building,

• 49:18Speaker 01

  it's not ingestion. Now, having said that, if someone is mold related illness, I will say go on a low mold diet because we don't want to add to your burden with pistachios or peanuts or moldy berries or moldy peanut butter or tomato sauces or some of the common foods that contain mold.

• 49:34Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, yeah, that's also, I make that part of like my dietary recommendations around mold as well, just to just to make sure it's not, you know, if we don't have a urine test, that kind of tells us what toxins are present. Sometimes we um we'll we'll talk about that as well. Wow, this was like a masterclass on mold. I really, really appreciate your knowledge there. Is there any part of mold treatment that we did not cover? Do you think we hit on all of it?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  We did really good. I'm just saying, don't panic if you think you might be exposed. There's always ways to do this. I loved Dr. Shaw, what you said about, by all means, like I said, I want to get the information out, but if you're really sick from mold, try to find someone who can help you because it's not for the faint of heart. It's a long process and it's kind of tricky.

• 50:12Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Right, right. And so with every episode, we have a really good show note process and we can send people a PDF of all of the notes. And please share it with your practitioner that you're seeing. I think functional medicine practitioners are uniquely uh good at handling this and integrative medicine. So uh find one that has taken that training. And if you're suffering with symptoms that you can't explain and there's and there's a recent event that might have triggered mold, like a lechlea, for example, really look into this. Don't don't just suffer needlessly for a long time.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I agree.

• 50:45Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I love it. Well, Dr. Carnahan, we I know there's so many more things that we need to talk about, but I'd love to talk a little bit more about the book behind you called Unexpected. That's your book. And I'd love for the audience to hear a little bit about it and kind of why, who should be reading your book?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Um, it came out a few years ago and was a bestseller at the time. And what was really interesting for me is there's so many books on how to reverse autoimmune disease, how to cure SIBO, and wonderful colleagues and friends. And what I felt really strongly about was I think story drives a lot. And so this is very different. It's a memoir. It's my own journey. Some of the pieces I've shared and a lot more in depth. And I also highlight some of my patients' journey with like Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections or chronic fatigue. So it's really this this line of journey of story, but in that, there's also sidebars with really practical, how to deal with mold, what to do if you have SIBO, what to do if you have Crohn's disease. So it's kind of the combination of, we call it a prescriptive memoir, but it's so very,

• 51:43Speaker 01

  very practical. But I find um the one comment that was the most common that I got that surprised and delighted me was that I read it through cover to cover in one sitting. They couldn't put it down. And I think that just says not anything about me, but about how story matters as we talk to one another. And I wanted to create a story that really would impact people.

• 52:01Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Yeah, no, I love I love the storytelling combined with learning. It makes the learning so much more tangible, right? So

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 52:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  I'm gonna, I'm definitely gonna bring my book to you um and have you sign it when I uh when I come out to Boulder.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  Love that. Oh, my goodness. Yes, yes.

• 52:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Awesome. Well, this is fantastic. Uh, Dr. Carnahan, where can people learn more from you and find you on social media and on um Amazon for your documentary?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, the book, anywhere books are sold. You can get it. Um, my main website is my name, Jill Carnahan, C A R N A H A N dot com. And that is a clearinghouse of like twenty years of blogs, podcasts, et cetera. Um, we now are nearing one million subscribers on YouTube. So check out the podcast. It's called Resiliency Radio and it's YouTube, but anywhere you listen, Audible, iTunes, Spotify, it's all of those places and more. And um, we'd love to see you there.

• 52:55Dr. Darshan Shah?

  That that very, very much appreciated. And I, when I spent at Amazon, I was thinking about your documentary. Isn't it on Amazon?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  It is on Amazon Prime. So it's called Doctor Patient Movie. If you just search for it, you can get it on Amazon Prime.

• 53:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Doctor Patient, fantastic. Jill, this was an amazing conversation. I can't wait to do this again with you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  You are so welcome.

• 53:18Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance.