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Thread: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)

    The mold might be acting like a very clever enemy that influences its opponent — the humans in the house that might kill it off — to consider there's no problem, and that there's no mold there.

    That sounds like a joke... but I'm not sure if it is.
    A friend of mine calls these mold critters the "anti-intelligence", with good reason.

    In this TedTalk by Bonnie Bassler, she talks about how bacteria communicate. Whilst she is not talking specifically about fungi here, I imagine that fungi would behave in a very similar way - the fungal intelligence.



    Here is the transcript:
    Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry - and our understanding of ourselves.

    Bacteria are the oldest living organisms on the earth. They've been here for billions of years, and what they are are single-celled microscopic organisms. So they are one cell and they have this special property that they only have one piece of DNA. They have very few genes, and genetic information to encode all of the traits that they carry out. And the way bacteria make a living is that they consume nutrients from the environment, they grow to twice their size, they cut themselves down in the middle, and one cell becomes two, and so on and so on. They just grow and divide, and grow and divide -- so a kind of boring life, except that what I would argue is that you have an amazing interaction with these critters.
    00:51
    I know you guys think of yourself as humans, and this is sort of how I think of you. This man is supposed to represent a generic human being, and all of the circles in that man are all of the cells that make up your body. There is about a trillion human cells that make each one of us who we are and able to do all the things that we do, but you have 10 trillion bacterial cells in you or on you at any moment in your life. So, 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells on a human being. And of course it's the DNA that counts, so here's all the A, T, Gs and Cs that make up your genetic code, and give you all your charming characteristics. You have about 30,000 genes. Well it turns out you have 100 times more bacterial genes playing a role in you or on you all of your life. At the best, you're 10 percent human, but more likely about one percent human, depending on which of these metrics you like. I know you think of yourself as human beings, but I think of you as 90 or 99 percent bacterial.
    01:47
    (Laughter)
    01:48
    These bacteria are not passive riders, these are incredibly important, they keep us alive. They cover us in an invisible body armor that keeps environmental insults out so that we stay healthy. They digest our food, they make our vitamins, they actually educate your immune system to keep bad microbes out. So they do all these amazing things that help us and are vital for keeping us alive, and they never get any press for that. But they get a lot of press because they do a lot of terrible things as well. So, there's all kinds of bacteria on the Earth that have no business being in you or on you at any time, and if they are, they make you incredibly sick.
    02:29
    And so, the question for my lab is whether you want to think about all the good things that bacteria do, or all the bad things that bacteria do. The question we had is how could they do anything at all? I mean they're incredibly small, you have to have a microscope to see one. They live this sort of boring life where they grow and divide, and they've always been considered to be these asocial reclusive organisms. And so it seemed to us that they are just too small to have an impact on the environment if they simply act as individuals. And so we wanted to think if there couldn't be a different way that bacteria live.
    03:01
    The clue to this came from another marine bacterium, and it's a bacterium called Vibrio fischeri. What you're looking at on this slide is just a person from my lab holding a flask of a liquid culture of a bacterium, a harmless beautiful bacterium that comes from the ocean, named Vibrio fischeri. This bacterium has the special property that it makes light, so it makes bioluminescence, like fireflies make light. We're not doing anything to the cells here. We just took the picture by turning the lights off in the room, and this is what we see.
    03:32
    What was actually interesting to us was not that the bacteria made light, but when the bacteria made light. What we noticed is when the bacteria were alone, so when they were in dilute suspension, they made no light. But when they grew to a certain cell number all the bacteria turned on light simultaneously. The question that we had is how can bacteria, these primitive organisms, tell the difference from times when they're alone, and times when they're in a community, and then all do something together. What we've figured out is that the way that they do that is that they talk to each other, and they talk with a chemical language.
    04:07
    This is now supposed to be my bacterial cell. When it's alone it doesn't make any light. But what it does do is to make and secrete small molecules that you can think of like hormones, and these are the red triangles, and when the bacteria is alone the molecules just float away and so no light. But when the bacteria grow and double and they're all participating in making these molecules, the molecule -- the extracellular amount of that molecule increases in proportion to cell number. And when the molecule hits a certain amount that tells the bacteria how many neighbors there are, they recognize that molecule and all of the bacteria turn on light in synchrony. That's how bioluminescence works -- they're talking with these chemical words.
    04:51
    The reason that Vibrio fischeri is doing that comes from the biology. Again, another plug for the animals in the ocean, Vibrio fischeri lives in this squid. What you are looking at is the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid, and it's been turned on its back, and what I hope you can see are these two glowing lobes and these house the Vibrio fischeri cells, they live in there, at high cell number that molecule is there, and they're making light. The reason the squid is willing to put up with these shenanigans is because it wants that light. The way that this symbiosis works is that this little squid lives just off the coast of Hawaii, just in sort of shallow knee-deep water. The squid is nocturnal, so during the day it buries itself in the sand and sleeps, but then at night it has to come out to hunt. On bright nights when there is lots of starlight or moonlight that light can penetrate the depth of the water the squid lives in, since it's just in those couple feet of water. What the squid has developed is a shutter that can open and close over this specialized light organ housing the bacteria. Then it has detectors on its back so it can sense how much starlight or moonlight is hitting its back. And it opens and closes the shutter so the amount of light coming out of the bottom -- which is made by the bacterium -- exactly matches how much light hits the squid's back, so the squid doesn't make a shadow. It actually uses the light from the bacteria to counter-illuminate itself in an anti-predation device so predators can't see its shadow, calculate its trajectory, and eat it. This is like the stealth bomber of the ocean.
    06:20
    (Laughter)
    06:21
    But then if you think about it, the squid has this terrible problem because it's got this dying, thick culture of bacteria and it can't sustain that. And so what happens is every morning when the sun comes up the squid goes back to sleep, it buries itself in the sand, and it's got a pump that's attached to its circadian rhythm, and when the sun comes up it pumps out like 95 percent of the bacteria. Now the bacteria are dilute, that little hormone molecule is gone, so they're not making light -- but of course the squid doesn't care. It's asleep in the sand. And as the day goes by the bacteria double, they release the molecule, and then light comes on at night, exactly when the squid wants it.
    06:57
    First we figured out how this bacterium does this, but then we brought the tools of molecular biology to this to figure out really what's the mechanism. And what we found -- so this is now supposed to be, again, my bacterial cell -- is that Vibrio fischeri has a protein -- that's the red box -- it's an enzyme that makes that little hormone molecule, the red triangle. And then as the cells grow, they're all releasing that molecule into the environment, so there's lots of molecule there. And the bacteria also have a receptor on their cell surface that fits like a lock and key with that molecule. These are just like the receptors on the surfaces of your cells. When the molecule increases to a certain amount -- which says something about the number of cells -- it locks down into that receptor and information comes into the cells that tells the cells to turn on this collective behavior of making light.
    07:46
    Why this is interesting is because in the past decade we have found that this is not just some anomaly of this ridiculous, glow-in-the-dark bacterium that lives in the ocean -- all bacteria have systems like this. So now what we understand is that all bacteria can talk to each other. They make chemical words, they recognize those words, and they turn on group behaviors that are only successful when all of the cells participate in unison. We have a fancy name for this: we call it quorum sensing. They vote with these chemical votes, the vote gets counted, and then everybody responds to the vote.
    08:19
    What's important for today's talk is that we know that there are hundreds of behaviors that bacteria carry out in these collective fashions. But the one that's probably the most important to you is virulence. It's not like a couple bacteria get in you and they start secreting some toxins -- you're enormous, that would have no effect on you. You're huge. What they do, we now understand, is they get in you, they wait, they start growing, they count themselves with these little molecules, and they recognize when they have the right cell number that if all of the bacteria launch their virulence attack together, they are going to be successful at overcoming an enormous host. Bacteria always control pathogenicity with quorum sensing. That's how it works.
    09:01
    We also then went to look at what are these molecules -- these were the red triangles on my slides before. This is the Vibrio fischeri molecule. This is the word that it talks with. So then we started to look at other bacteria, and these are just a smattering of the molecules that we've discovered. What I hope you can see is that the molecules are related. The left-hand part of the molecule is identical in every single species of bacteria. But the right-hand part of the molecule is a little bit different in every single species. What that does is to confer exquisite species specificities to these languages. Each molecule fits into its partner receptor and no other. So these are private, secret conversations. These conversations are for intraspecies communication. Each bacteria uses a particular molecule that's its language that allows it to count its own siblings.
    09:54
    Once we got that far we thought we were starting to understand that bacteria have these social behaviors. But what we were really thinking about is that most of the time bacteria don't live by themselves, they live in incredible mixtures, with hundreds or thousands of other species of bacteria. And that's depicted on this slide. This is your skin. So this is just a picture -- a micrograph of your skin. Anywhere on your body, it looks pretty much like this, and what I hope you can see is that there's all kinds of bacteria there. And so we started to think if this really is about communication in bacteria, and it's about counting your neighbors, it's not enough to be able to only talk within your species. There has to be a way to take a census of the rest of the bacteria in the population.
    10:35
    So we went back to molecular biology and started studying different bacteria, and what we've found now is that in fact, bacteria are multilingual. They all have a species-specific system -- they have a molecule that says "me." But then, running in parallel to that is a second system that we've discovered, that's generic. So, they have a second enzyme that makes a second signal and it has its own receptor, and this molecule is the trade language of bacteria. It's used by all different bacteria and it's the language of interspecies communication. What happens is that bacteria are able to count how many of me and how many of you. They take that information inside, and they decide what tasks to carry out depending on who's in the minority and who's in the majority of any given population.
    11:23
    Then again we turn to chemistry, and we figured out what this generic molecule is -- that was the pink ovals on my last slide, this is it. It's a very small, five-carbon molecule. What the important thing is that we learned is that every bacterium has exactly the same enzyme and makes exactly the same molecule. So they're all using this molecule for interspecies communication. This is the bacterial Esperanto.
    11:48
    (Laughter)
    11:49
    Once we got that far, we started to learn that bacteria can talk to each other with this chemical language. But what we started to think is that maybe there is something practical that we can do here as well. I've told you that bacteria do have all these social behaviors, they communicate with these molecules. Of course, I've also told you that one of the important things they do is to initiate pathogenicity using quorum sensing. We thought, what if we made these bacteria so they can't talk or they can't hear? Couldn't these be new kinds of antibiotics?
    12:18
    Of course, you've just heard and you already know that we're running out of antibiotics. Bacteria are incredibly multi-drug-resistant right now, and that's because all of the antibiotics that we use kill bacteria. They either pop the bacterial membrane, they make the bacterium so it can't replicate its DNA. We kill bacteria with traditional antibiotics and that selects for resistant mutants. And so now of course we have this global problem in infectious diseases. We thought, well what if we could sort of do behavior modifications, just make these bacteria so they can't talk, they can't count, and they don't know to launch virulence.
    12:53
    And so that's exactly what we've done, and we've sort of taken two strategies. The first one is we've targeted the intraspecies communication system. So we made molecules that look kind of like the real molecules -- which you saw -- but they're a little bit different. And so they lock into those receptors, and they jam recognition of the real thing. By targeting the red system, what we are able to do is to make species-specific, or disease-specific, anti-quorum sensing molecules. We've also done the same thing with the pink system. We've taken that universal molecule and turned it around a little bit so that we've made antagonists of the interspecies communication system. The hope is that these will be used as broad-spectrum antibiotics that work against all bacteria.
    13:37
    To finish I'll just show you the strategy. In this one I'm just using the interspecies molecule, but the logic is exactly the same. What you know is that when that bacterium gets into the animal, in this case, a mouse, it doesn't initiate virulence right away. It gets in, it starts growing, it starts secreting its quorum sensing molecules. It recognizes when it has enough bacteria that now they're going to launch their attack, and the animal dies. What we've been able to do is to give these virulent infections, but we give them in conjunction with our anti-quorum sensing molecules -- so these are molecules that look kind of like the real thing, but they're a little bit different which I've depicted on this slide. What we now know is that if we treat the animal with a pathogenic bacterium -- a multi-drug-resistant pathogenic bacterium -- in the same time we give our anti-quorum sensing molecule, in fact, the animal lives.
    14:27
    We think that this is the next generation of antibiotics and it's going to get us around, at least initially, this big problem of resistance. What I hope you think, is that bacteria can talk to each other, they use chemicals as their words, they have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that we're just now starting to learn about. Of course what that allows bacteria to do is to be multicellular. So in the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference. What happens is that bacteria have these collective behaviors, and they can carry out tasks that they could never accomplish if they simply acted as individuals.
    15:06
    What I would hope that I could further argue to you is that this is the invention of multicellularity. Bacteria have been on the Earth for billions of years; humans, couple hundred thousand. We think bacteria made the rules for how multicellular organization works. We think, by studying bacteria, we're going to be able to have insight about multicellularity in the human body. We know that the principles and the rules, if we can figure them out in these sort of primitive organisms, the hope is that they will be applied to other human diseases and human behaviors as well. I hope that what you've learned is that bacteria can distinguish self from other. By using these two molecules they can say "me" and they can say "you." Again of course that's what we do, both in a molecular way, and also in an outward way, but I think about the molecular stuff.
    15:56
    This is exactly what happens in your body. It's not like your heart cells and your kidney cells get all mixed up every day, and that's because there's all of this chemistry going on, these molecules that say who each of these groups of cells is, and what their tasks should be. Again, we think that bacteria invented that, and you've just evolved a few more bells and whistles, but all of the ideas are in these simple systems that we can study.
    16:19
    The final thing is, again just to reiterate that there's this practical part, and so we've made these anti-quorum sensing molecules that are being developed as new kinds of therapeutics. But then, to finish with a plug for all the good and miraculous bacteria that live on the Earth, we've also made pro-quorum sensing molecules. So, we've targeted those systems to make the molecules work better. Remember you have these 10 times or more bacterial cells in you or on you, keeping you healthy. What we're also trying to do is to beef up the conversation of the bacteria that live as mutualists with you, in the hopes of making you more healthy, making those conversations better, so bacteria can do things that we want them to do better than they would be on their own.
    17:01
    Finally, I wanted to show you this is my gang at Princeton, New Jersey. Everything I told you about was discovered by someone in that picture. I hope when you learn things, like about how the natural world works -- I just want to say that whenever you read something in the newspaper or you get to hear some talk about something ridiculous in the natural world it was done by a child. Science is done by that demographic. All of those people are between 20 and 30 years old, and they are the engine that drives scientific discovery in this country. It's a really lucky demographic to work with. I keep getting older and older and they're always the same age, and it's just a crazy delightful job. I want to thank you for inviting me here. It's a big treat for me to get to come to this conference.
    Last edited by Constance; 17th May 2019 at 00:24.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Fungal intelligence


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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Please read all of the posts from the beginning in this thread. They cover most of what my experience has been as a builder and remodeler dealing with making our living and working spaces safe. Although I initially did not intend to focus on safety and health when becoming a carpenter, roofer and a builder all of the building codes I worked with also had the added benefit of protecting our health.

    First of all Bill, your habit of leaving all of the windows open has been a great protector of your health. Keep it up. Also, when searching for mold DO wear a mask to protect yourself from the airborne spores that mold gives off, esp. when disturbed.

    It looks like your attic has little or no ventilation in it, with a probability that your outside roof overhang/soffit does not have any vents going into the attic area, as well as not having a way for the air to circulate and dry any moisture in the attic, with no visible roof venting system (turbines or even vents) to carry the air and it's moisture outside. Lack of proper ventilation and adequate moisture drainage within our living areas, walls and especially our attic areas creates a living environment for mold. I see this lack of proper ventilation often in areas that do not comply with or pre-date the common sense codes meant to make our work and living spaces safe for us.

    Both Erin Brockovich, the awesome environmental educator and activist, as well as Ed McMahon, the famous t.v. host, lived in a new, high-end housing development in California that became a health threat for it's inhabitants, who eventually all had serious health issues solely due to the builder's poor construction methods that ended up encapsulating the moisture within, causing the growth of the dangerous molds they endured.

    The clay tile roof looks old and probably is broken in many places leaving space for the rain to enter into the roof sheathing it is fastened to, or in some cases wired to each other and then fastened to the roof base itself. The underlayment alone likely does not have any protective layer of rubberized or even asphalt/felt sheathing to protect the wood from absorbing the rain. There may be many years of the rain being absorbed into the attic thru this leaky roof.

    Remember that when dealing with this problem that wood deeply embedded with mold has to be removed, as drying only temporarily suspends the mold until new moisture is absorbed. I do like clay tiles and some concrete tiles for their longevity and where you're at the high UV index (at altitude and from the weakened magnetic field, etc.) puts them as lasting longer than the cheaper alternatives like asphalt or wood shingles.

    If I were in your area I would have already told you this and most likely offered to work on it with your help, of course. I do that with friends here in this high desert area of the southwest states.

    As a business customer I have smelled mold in buildings before and offered some insight, at least to the workers inside giving them a heads up as to the likely effects of working in such spaces. It is most likely that by the time you smell mold or it has penetrated into the living area it has had taken a lot of time to soak thru the roofing material, the sheeting covering the roof rafters, the roof rafters themselves, any insulation in the attic, the ceiling rafters and the ceiling. It has been there for a while and mold has had time to grow.

    All the Best,
    Hymn
    Last edited by Hym; 17th May 2019 at 00:00.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Constance (here)
    Fungal intelligence

    WOW.

    Slime mold that solves mazes and can replan the Tokyo subway system more efficiently? (Yes, you read that right. )

    Kudos to Joe Rogan here... again, he shows us he's the best interviewer around, and he's VERY smart. (How he picks his guests always shows us how smart he is.)

    My own guess about the leap in human brain size — and many reading this might not disagree — is more related to ET intervention. But that's actually beside the point here. The argument is about fungi as a neurological stimulant (my paraphrase) that assisted all aspects of human evolution.

    Fascinating, really. The little video is a delightful and compelling must-see, it truly is.

    But — this is NOT the same as mold, which rather acts as a parasite, compromising its host to its own ends. The connection here is about the functional 'intelligence' of fungi and mold. That's the link.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Hym (here)
    Please read all of the posts from the beginning in this thread. They cover most of what my experience has been as a builder and remodeler dealing with making our living and working spaces safe. Although I initially did not intend to focus on safety and health when becoming a carpenter, roofer and a builder all of the building codes I worked with also had the added benefit of protecting our health.
    Thanks. And I definitely will.

    Quote Posted by Hym (here)
    The clay tile roof looks old and probably is broken in many places leaving space for the rain to enter into the roof sheathing it is fastened to, or in some cases wired to each other and then fastened to the roof base itself. The underlayment alone likely does not have any protective layer of rubberized or even asphalt/felt sheathing to protect the wood from absorbing the rain. There may be many years of the rain being absorbed into the attic thru this leaky roof.

    Remember that when dealing with this problem that wood deeply embedded with mold has to be removed, as drying only temporarily suspends the mold until new moisture is absorbed.
    Yes, you nailed it totally. That describes the situation completely. It can't be repaired or treated. The timbers all have to be replaced.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Molds Are Parasites That Live Off Our Nutrients

    Parasitic fungi absorb nutrients from the body fluids of its host, and may produce specialized hyphae called haustoria that penetrate a host’s cell wall and lie against the plasma membrane, where they can both absorb food.” – University of Las Vegas

    One of the key factors in treating a toxic mold illness is understanding exactly what various molds do to our bodies and how they affect the various nutrients, minerals, and vitamins that we humans need for optimum health.

    Many people falsely assume that human parasites only consist of the many different worms that inhabit our bodies and can cause diseases like tapeworms, roundworms, and pinworms. But the facts are there are many molds that are also considered parasites.

    What you need to understand is that there is a lot of bad information about mold illness and disease going around the internet and bad advice in the various Facebook groups. One of the most common that I have seen relates to people who claim that fungal infections or “mycoses” are very rare and that the molds found in our homes cannot infect and grow in our bodies. They say that only the toxins released from various molds can make you ill and cause disease.

    For example, I recently had a debate with a man in a Toxic Mold Group on Facebook who claimed to be a mold specialist and nationally recognized expert in Indoor Environmental Quality with decades of experience. He basically said that fungal infections are rare and that the mold found in our homes cannot grow in and on your body. Here are some of his exact words:

    Here are some of his exact words: “Contrary to Moe’s comments, mold is rarely an infection (or as he calls it, a parasite; also, mold infection is like a virus or bacteria infection. a parasite usually lives inside the body and effect is sub-clinical, aka no overt symptoms). When nearly all people on this group discuss mold, they discuss the effects of mold in the environment. That mold is growing in the building NOT in/on you. Infection is rare.”

    But this is not true and I will prove it to you in this article.

    In fact, this advice is dangerous and can be deadly to those people out there who do have fungal infections and are not addressing these infections with the proper antifungals which is a very important aspect of a health protocol.

    The simplest way to wrap your mind around this is by acknowledging that various molds are not only pathogens that release secondary metabolites called mycotoxins which can cause illness and disease, they are also considered parasites that live in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.

    This is exactly what mold does in the human body and the precise reason why many people who are sick from mold suffer from a multitude of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. It does the same thing to plants, trees, and other animals. Humans are no different. We are not immune from these molds growing in and on our bodies as they steal our vital nutrients and make us weak, ill and diseased.

    It is well known in the science of mycology (mold science) that parasitic molds (fungi) cause a wide variety of diseases in plants, animals, and humans. Most of these parasitic molds are members of the class Fungi imperfecti, since they reproduce only asexually. The body of a parasitic fungus consists of branching multicellular filaments (hyphae) of the myceliumthat it uses to attach to the cell wall of its host to absorb its nutrients.

    There are many different types of molds that live on and in the human body which classifies them as parasites. For example, one of the most common are those that cause athlete’s foot, ringworm and candida yeast infections are imperfect fungi.

    Professor Neil Gow, from the University of Aberdeen had said that a million people die a year from fungal infections: “Most people know about mild fungal infections, but nobody’s ever died from athlete’s foot. However, a million people die a year from fungal infections and we need to understand these different types of infection and how to deal with them. It’s an underappreciated problem and it’s a very serious challenge in the parts of the world least equipped to deal with it.”

    Are the molds that are found indoors parasitic?
    Many of these same parasitic molds that are killing people cane be found within our homes and commercial buildings. Molds like aspergillus, penicillium, and cladosporium, to name a few.

    The facts are that many of the parasitic molds (fungi) found indoors can cause fungal infections or “mycoses” for the inhabitants that breathe in the mold spores and mycotoxins and also through dermal and oral exposure. For example, one of the most common molds that are found indoors is aspergillus. Aspergillus is well known in the scientific community of mycology to produce numerous fungal infections under the general label of Aspergillosis.

    This can cause numerous infection such a fungus ball in the lungs that may cause a cough, fever, repeated coughing up of blood, chest pain, and occasionally severe, even fatal, bleeding. Poorly controlled aspergillosis can disseminate through the blood stream to cause widespread organ damage. Symptoms include fever, chills, shock, delirium, seizures and blood clots. The person may develop kidney failure, liver failure (causing jaundice), and breathing difficulties. Death can occur quickly.

    Aspergillosis of the ear canal causes itching and occasionally pain. Fluid draining overnight from the ear may leave a stain on the pillow. Aspergillosis of the sinuses causes a feeling of congestion and sometimes pain or discharge. It can extend beyond the sinuses. These infections occur more in immune compromised people, but they also infect people who do not have weakened immune systems.

    How do these molds parasite off humans and steal our nutrients?
    A fungus is a eukaryote that digests food externally and absorbs nutrients directly through its cell walls. The absorptive lifestyle of fungi is intimately associated with 2 important characteristics: production of spores and hypha (mycelial growth).

    A spore is a tiny, usually haploid, cell that disperses the fungus to new habitats, usually by floating thru the air. The production of many tiny spores increases the chance that at least a few will fall onto a suitable food source, germinate, and start absorbing food, and then growing into a thread-like hypha. The hyphae, which develops right after spore germination, puts out powerful enzymes needed to digest food for the fungus.

    The body of a fungus, made up of many hyphae, is called a mycelium. The mycelium is well-suited to absorbing food. It has a high surface-volume ration permitting the surface exposed to the external food source to absorb enough food to nourish the enclosed body of cytoplasm.

    Parasitic fungi absorb nutrients from the body fluids of its host, and may produce specialized hyphae called haustoria that penetrate a host’s cell wall and lie against the plasma membrane, where they can both absorb food.

    Mold Safe Solutions Conclusion
    These parasites (fungi/molds) can feed on your flesh, blood, your vitamins, and minerals. They like almost all the same nutrients humans require for our health such as carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, proteins, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc, manganese, copper, calcium, molybdenum, and gallium are needed by most fungi for vigorous growth. Most fungi appear able to synthesize all other vitamins necessary for their growth and reproduction.(Encyclopedia Britannica)

    They do so until your body and health starts to break down so they can kill and eat you. If you do not resupply the vital vitamins and nutrients these parasitic fungi are stealing from your body, you will eventually become deficient and illness and disease will set in.

    In order to combat these nutrient robbers, you need to fill this deficiency by “supplementing” more of the vitamins and minerals you are lacking in so your body gets the vitamins and minerals it needs to function properly. If you ae functioning properly, you can get to work at restoring your health and getting your life back on track.

    Part of this process involves killing the mold in your body. I know some people hate to hear these words “kill mold.” But the facts are if you do not kill the mold in your body, it will continue to reproduce, grow and multiply until it kills you.

    Make no doubt about it. This is a fight for your health and life. A war being waged within your body and cells that you need to be an active participant in. If you do not fight and kill your foe, it will fight and kill you. These are the simple laws of war.

    Fortunately, the weapons you need to fight with are not dangerous and most likely will not hurt you in the process. The I like to use in order to kill the parasitic mold in my family’s bodies are done with natural antifungals that have no to very little side effects such as oregano oil, grapefruit seed extract, garlic or garlicin, clove oil, cat’s claw, and MCT oil to name a few.
    Source: Moldsafesolutions.com/parasites/
    Last edited by Constance; 17th May 2019 at 00:45.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    I’m guessing many of you reading this are familiar with the fascinating and bizarre effects various species of fungi can have on the “behavior” of MANY insect species!

    Here is a short video from BBC narrated by David Attenborough illustrating the point:



    Now I don’t want to alarm you, Bill, and I’m not suggesting that black mold will cause you to climb to the nearest attic and.. well you get the picture

    Here is an article published just a month ago by National Geographic Online:

    THEY WALK AMONG us: insects hijacked by parasitic fungi that control their every move.

    The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus has just one goal: self-propagation and dispersal. Researchers think the fungus, found in tropical forests, infects a foraging ant through spores that attach and penetrate the exoskeleton and slowly takes over its behavior.

    As the infection advances, the enthralled ant is compelled to leave its nest for a more humid microclimate that’s favorable to the fungus’s growth. The ant is compelled to descend to a vantage point about 10 inches off the ground, sink its jaws into a leaf vein on the north side of a plant, and wait for death.

    Meanwhile, the fungus feeds on its victim’s innards until it’s ready for the final stage. Several days after the ant has died, the fungus sends a fruiting body out through the base of the ant’s head, turning its shriveled corpse into a launchpad from which it can jettison its spores and infect new ants.

    “It definitely speaks to the imagination of both scientists and the general public,” says Charissa de Bekker, a University of Central Florida professor who studies parasite-host interactions that lead to behavioral manipulations.

    As in zombie lore, there’s an incubation period where infected ants appear perfectly normal and go about their business undetected by the rest of the colony. That’s unusual because social insects like ants usually have something called social immunity: Sick members get kicked out of the group to prevent the rest from getting sick too. “We think the ants don’t really have a mechanism to get rid of Ophiocordyceps,” de Bekker says.

    While the infection is 100 percent lethal, the goal isn’t to convert all the ants into the walking dead. For ecosystems to stay balanced, fungi have to keep host populations in check. In fact, only a few ants in a colony are infected at any given time.

    “It’s almost like a chronic cold,” de Bekker says.

    And perhaps in the biggest deviation from the zombie playbook, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis don’t seem to invade the brain.

    Using a type of fluorescent microscopy, researchers from Pennsylvania State University watched fungal colonization in ants from the gaster, the rear end of the abdomen, to the head—and found no trace of fungal cells in the brain. They coupled that information with computer algorithms to chart the movement of fungi as they formed a sort of tubular scaffolding within and around ants’ muscle bundles.

    This suggests the fungus casts its mind control through bioactive compounds that interfere with the ant’s nervous system and control hosts directly at the muscles, de Bekker says.

    Researchers in Thailand and the United States are studying different Ophiocordyceps species that infect other species of ants to compare their control mechanisms. In all, researchers have identified over 200 species of Ophiocordyceps that can infect hosts from 10 insect orders, as well as spiders, though not all lead to behavioral manipulation.

    One related species, O. sinensis, colonizes ghost moth caterpillars and erupts from their head like a unicorn horn. The fungus-caterpillar husk combination is prized in traditional Tibetan and Chinese medicine as an immune booster, cancer treatment, and aphrodisiac. In a bizarre twist, Ophiocordyceps species that inhabitat Japanese cicadas may have even replaced symbiotic bacteria to help their hosts process nutrients from sap.

    Much like the microbiome in our own guts, insects contain a whole array of fungal species, says Barrett Klein, an entomologist at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse. But because not all fungi can be grown in the lab, only a couple have been closely studied, much less flagged for causing behavioral manipulations.

    Scientists do know of a few though. There’s Entomophthora muscae, which literally means “insect destroyer of the fly” in Greek. It causes infected flies to climb a certain height, glue themselves at the mouth to a plant, and assume an abdomen-up “death pose” that’s optimal for spore dispersal.

    And there’s Massospora cicadina, which pumps its cicada hosts full of hallucinogenic drugs and causes part of their abdomens to fall off. The bare-bottomed cicada then wiggles its way towards death—again in the interest of spore dispersal.

    “It’s exciting terrain at the fringes of our understanding to look at the extent of how parasites control their host,” Klein says. “If animals are so easily manipulated, what does that mean about us?”

    BY JENNIFER LU
    PUBLISHED APRIL 18, 2019
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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)
    Sadly, one of the workers told me that the company typically uses harsh chemicals, and - because it costs them more - they only use the product made with thyme if the customer asks for a "green" solution.
    How terrible! At least they were honest about it though.
    It's wonderful to know there's an alternative, I've also heard horror stories about black mold.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
    Quote Posted by Hym (here)
    The clay tile roof looks old and probably is broken in many places leaving space for the rain to enter into the roof sheathing it is fastened to, or in some cases wired to each other and then fastened to the roof base itself. The underlayment alone likely does not have any protective layer of rubberized or even asphalt/felt sheathing to protect the wood from absorbing the rain. There may be many years of the rain being absorbed into the attic thru this leaky roof.

    Remember that when dealing with this problem that wood deeply embedded with mold has to be removed, as drying only temporarily suspends the mold until new moisture is absorbed.
    Yes, you nailed it totally. That describes the situation completely. It can't be repaired or treated. The timbers all have to be replaced.
    Thanks Bill, that about sums it up. It's impossible to fix this. Reminds me of car rust which is kind of similar, albeit less deadly, and also caused by moisture (and salt?)

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Bill,

    I've been thinking about your mold situation, and I want to advise you to not panic and to not invest tens of thousands of dollars in replacing the rafters in your home. Without boring all with my resume, I have experience in restoration, remediation, preservation, asset management including planning and overseeing major capx improvements and projects.

    Mold is abundant in the environment and needs moisture and heat to thrive. The "big panic" over mold is blatant hysteria. Its like the Radon thing. Radon naturally occurs, and there are a lot of charlatans out there, exploiting people's fears and making big bucks off of radon remediation.

    Your problem, at its root cause is your roof. When you were being inundated with flooding, the first thing you should have done was repair/replace the roof. Water under the rafters now, but this is where your problem lies. I would guess that the clay tiles are relatively cheap and abundant there. What you need to do remove all the clay tiles, save the ones that are still viable and replace the broken/missing ones. Then you need to buy sheathing (3/4" plywood should suffice) and a plastic barrier to staple on top of the plywood. From there, you can start re-installing the clay tile.

    Now, regarding the rafters, affected drywall and mold. You can cut out the drywall, or conversely, if it is not too waterlogged, you can clean it with 50/50 bleach/water and seal with a good sealer and paint. If the rafters are not rotten, you can clean them with bleach/water and seal and paint them. Even if they are compromised a bit, you can purchase wood hardener and fill in any part that might be compromised.

    I would be happy to advise more, if you are interested. Feel free to PM if you need help. If you are willing to invest a little "elbow grease", you can save a lot of money, hassle and headache. But remember, first thing's first. Root cause analysis - fix the roof (unless the rafters are soft and completely rotten and not supporting the roof, then you have to replace those too).

    Best Wishes,
    Ari

    Edit to add: I presumed drywall, but I bet what you have is plaster. If so, that is very good news. Just a thorough clean and seal will fix)
    Last edited by AriG; 21st May 2019 at 21:23.
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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by AriG (here)
    Bill,
    I've been thinking about your mold situation, and I want to advise you to not panic and to not invest tens of thousands of dollars in replacing the rafters in your home. Without boring all with my resume, I have experience in restoration, remediation, preservation, asset management including planning and overseeing major capx improvements and projects.
    Thank you!! Yes, I might well pick your brains by PM. (Hym knows a lot, too.)

    I truly don't want this thread to become all about my roof! Because it's really about wellness, and ameliorating the effects on the body (which can be considerable). But part of the process of healing an entire mold situation must include getting the mold outta there.

    Briefly: Yes, re the tiles, which may themselves be moldy. They'll all be replaced. They're very old, and many are broken and/or shifted by wind, weather and the occasional earthquake.

    The large timbers may be okay (but are cheap here, anyway). Smaller wooden beams (some of which are bamboo) seem to be moldy. The walls are all adobe, 80 years old and 2 feet thick. They seem to be dry. But more will be discovered when the roof is removed.

    The entire thing will cost maybe $4500 (argh! ) and take 3 weeks, with a heavy tarp over each section while it's being renovated while I also move everything out of whichever room or rooms are underneath the work in progress, stage by stage. It's all quite a big deal.

    This is interesting (maybe) — bringing the thread kind of back to topic. In Dr Mercola's very interesting interview with Dr Shoemaker in Constance's post #31, Dr Shoemaker references an online visual test one can do to check for the likelihood of mold-related neural damage.

    It's called the Visual Contrast Sensitivity Test, and he has that on his site survivingmold.com for $15. But there's a free version here — https://vcstest.com — and all one has to do is register. You pay $10 if you want to do it more than once, and/or to get a detailed auto-analysis of your result.

    But for a quick-and-easy quasi-diagnostic, it's really simple to do. It takes about 3 minutes flat, and merely involves looking at shapes on the computer screen and clicking buttons depending on what one thinks one can see.

    I was feeling quite pleased with myself until I read more deeply into the numbers in my results, which (alarmingly! But very politely and carefully) told me that I might have neural damage and should consult a medical practitioner.

    OMG. I'm not believing that, of course, so at the moment I'm blaming my computer screen, the room lighting, my recent UV burn, and anything else that occurs to me. Some medical diagnostics can be more frightening than the ailment.

    But what this underlines is that I definitely need to get the mold out of my environment, and then I can start on any healing protocols that are needed. It's really really interesting to me that we usually only start to learn about this kind of stuff when we find ourselves personally affected.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    I watched a fascinating documentary about fungus a few months back. It mentioned that what keeps us safe from most forms of parasitic fungi is most of them prefer cooler environments. That's why athletes foot, a fungus, affects the feet of seniors. Poor circulation keeps their extremities cooler so their feet are more susceptible to infection. Reptiles, being cold blooded are also more susceptible to fungal infections. Fish too.

    But here's the thing. As the planet warms, some harmful fungus are expected to evolve to aclimate to warmer temperatures. Ones that would previously die in warmer temperatures will (and likely are) adapting to temperatures of...say...98.6F

    Just one more thing to be paranoid about. Fungus is going to be a big problem in the future.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Fungus is wicked smart. Maybe the mushroom coloured grey aliens are the hyper-mobile fruiting bodies of highly advanced mycelial networks. Oh, and just remembered. In Sweden, Ikea is going to start using commercially grown mycelium networks as packaging for its products.

    I contacted the American company that was trying to get a similar operation off the ground a couple of years ago. I asked them if they were going to go public and that I was very interested in their product. Most of these amazing new ideas remain in the private domain, reliant on venture capital. Too bad. They never got back to me. But I was SO overjoyed when I read Ikea is using fungus, it made my day.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    I was listening to this and found some good info on getting toxic mould out of the body. Start at around 42 mins. There are herbal methods, using caffeine and an alcohol method for clearing the lungs of mould which is particularly interesting. You will need 40% alcohol. Listen through to the end of the questions and answers for Mark for full details.


    Last edited by Trisher; 15th December 2020 at 11:07.

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Trisher (here)
    I was listening to this and found some good info on getting toxic mould out of the body. Start at around 42 mins. There are herbal methods, using caffeine and an alcohol method for clearing the lungs of mould which is particularly interesting. You will need 40% alcohol. Listen through to the end of the questions and answers for Mark for full details.


    I wonder if you could kindly summarize the cleansing protocol in just few essential points for the benefit of our readers elsewhere.
    The video is long and I can’t find it ASAP.

    Thank you 🙏

    Most recently, black fungus was detected in post-Covid 19 patients lungs in number of hospitals in India.

    It was classified as Covid-triggered mucormycosis.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.f...12041.html/amp


    I can’t confirm or deny that the fungus is rather widely spread in many tropical and subtropical climatic zones all over the globe and any sort of exposure to it is extremely detrimental to plants, animals and humans.


    It’s a problem no one has been paying attention for very long now.


    It’s not clear from these current medical reports how many so called “Covid deaths” were actually caused by underlying fungal or bacterial infection as majority of other pathogens in the game seem to be blatantly ignored !!



    🖐🏿

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    Default Re: BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

    Quote Posted by Agape (here)
    Quote Posted by Trisher (here)
    I was listening to this and found some good info on getting toxic mould out of the body. Start at around 42 mins. There are herbal methods, using caffeine and an alcohol method for clearing the lungs of mould which is particularly interesting. You will need 40% alcohol. Listen through to the end of the questions and answers for Mark for full details.


    I wonder if you could kindly summarize the cleansing protocol in just few essential points for the benefit of our readers elsewhere.
    The video is long and I can’t find it ASAP.

    Thank you 🙏

    Most recently, black fungus was detected in post-Covid 19 patients lungs in number of hospitals in India.

    It was classified as Covid-triggered mucormycosis.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.f...12041.html/amp


    I can’t confirm or deny that the fungus is rather widely spread in many tropical and subtropical climatic zones all over the globe and any sort of exposure to it is extremely detrimental to plants, animals and humans.


    It’s a problem no one has been paying attention for very long now.


    It’s not clear from these current medical reports how many so called “Covid deaths” were actually caused by underlying fungal or bacterial infection as majority of other pathogens in the game seem to be blatantly ignored !!



    🖐🏿
    The herbs and protocol etc are found at approx 42 mins into the video when Mark Kilcoyne comes on to speak. He is a nutritionist. The alcohol method is basically taking a sip of 40% alcohol and warming it to body heat on the tongue..then when warmed you breathe air in over the tongue at least three times. He does not say how many times in total you need to do this. Apparently you can become quite sozzled!

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