BLACK MOLD : symptoms, remedies, treatment, elimination?

[Bill Ryan]

.
Hi, All:

I have a friend (an Avalon member who prefers to stay anonymous, so I'm posting this on her behalf) who recently found black mold in her bathroom.

She sprayed it over with bleach... but since pretty much that time has come down with a wide range of symptoms that may or may not be related. Those include


Joint pain
Putting on weight
An undiagnosed tooth/root problem
A dry cough (following a cold) that will NOT go away.

I didn't know enough about black mold (I've never encountered it) to offer any advice — apart from taking low, frequent doses of MMS, which my friend has on hand. (I suggested trying 2-4 drops at a time, every hour or two, for a week or so, and seeing if any of the symptoms alleviated.)

I do know that black mold can be pretty nasty, even seriously so. Does anyone here have any experience of this, how to get rid of it, the effects it can cause on health, and how to deal with all that?

[Limor Wolf]

Hi Bill and Avalon friend, wishing you well and hope that you get back to good health in no time. This will probably sound irrelevent but it my be worth checking as an out of the box approach - time loop_ solutions (http://www.timeloopsolution.com/english/index_e.html), Consortium for Morgellon-related Research by Harald kautz vella and other researchers. They do have black goo globuli product and other suggestions related to infopathica (http://www.timeloopsolution.com/english/faq_e.html), and also have a contact page. The MMS small concentration recommendation sounds good as the Chlorine Dioxide should work to eliminate the pathogenic bacterias that are related to mold. Blessings ~

[Sunny-side-up]

wow
http://blackmold.awardspace.com/black-mold-toxic-stachybotrys-mycotoxins.html
You name it, it causes it.

I have a lot of the symptoms myself, have removed the Black-Mold from my home many times but is in the fabric of the building I guess!

Just one way to removal from your home from the above site:


Mold Removal with Baking Soda

Baking soda is well known as a natural and safe household cleaner. But you can also use baking soda to kill mold in your home. Unlike other mold killers which contain harsh chemicals, baking soda is mild (pH of 8.1) and harmless to your family and any pets.

Besides killing mold, baking soda also deodorizes and so using it can get rid of the smell mold leaves in your home. Baking soda also absorbs moisture to help keep mold away.

Vinegar is often used along with baking soda when cleaning up a mold problem since vinegar kills different species of mold to baking soda.

How to Kill Mold with Baking Soda

Add one quarter of a tablespoon of baking soda to a spray bottle of water.

Shake the bottle to dissolve the baking soda into the water.

Spray the moldy area with the baking soda and water solution.

Then use a sponge or scrubbing brush to make sure to remove all the mold from the surface.

Once you've scrubbed away the mold rinse the surface with water to remove any residual mold on the surface.

Spray the area with the spray bottle again and let the surface dry. This will kill any left over mold and prevent the mold returning.

You can use a cloth instead of a spray bottle to clean mold with baking soda:

Soak a cloth in water and then add one quarter of a tablespoon of baking soda to it.

Use the cloth on the moldy area to remove the mold with the baking soda and water solution.

[Ernie Nemeth]

Black mold is considered very dangerous and if the authorities hear of it in a public building they will shut the entire place down to deal with it. It takes a few weeks to deal with it properly, requiring a special gas that is sprayed into the effected area. Then a chemical bath is applied and let to dry. There are also commercial spray bottles to deal with black mold that can be bought at any hardware store. Apply as directed.

[Nikola Tesla]

Please google grapefruit seed extract and his benefits. We use them vor many things. Cleanig but also for health problems to. But you have handle it carefully becuse its realy strong. Just one drop for one liter wather. MMS and colodial silver may also help. A friend of me had problems with her teeth roots and she take tre days probiotic from Russia and tri times a day she wash her mouth with a mix from dryed Stevia leavs and collodial silver. This mix is very antibacterial and helped her.

[Bob]

Hi Bill - Aspergillus Niger - the "yuck"


http://hnstmoldinspections.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bigstock-Mold-In-Bathroom-100857779-848x480.jpg


Aspergillus niger, one of the most familiar molds, begins as a microscopic, airborne spore that germinates on contact with the moist surface of nonliving organic matter.

This picture shows the damaging effect at the base of a shower to the wall and subfloor. The mold can get behind the shower tiles and continue to grow if there is continued moist wet drizzle through the tile grout (grout should have been sealed).

Steps to deal with it:


Alcohol is an effective fungicide because it is able to penetrate the cell walls and spores of Aspergillus niger, killing it in the process.
To use alcohol, apply a liberal amount of a 70% solution to all visible areas of fungus, and let it sit for ten minutes.
After 10 minutes of contact time with alcohol, you can wipe the treated area clean and dry it with a clean rag, cloth, or mop.
Alcohol is safe for use in the home and in most settings, understand that it is highly flammable and one MUST have adequate ventillation (DO NOT LET THE ALCOHOL VAPORS BUILD as one does not want to harm oneself from breathing alcohol vapor, nor create a situation where an explosion/fire could happen, so extinguish ALL pilot lights, do not smoke near the area, etc.).
Therefore, make absolutely sure to avoid using it near any flame or fire source.


I remember a long time ago, in the late '50's we would use a phenol based cleaner, which would soak into the area where the mold would seep, and create a toxic vapor which would keep the mold away.. Ever since then there have been thousands of articles where folks have said, stay AWAY from phenols (although they do work) such as "Spic 'n Span".

Then the alternatives to keeping the mold away are the essential oils. Tea Tree Oil has a most unique aroma and is well tolerated by the human body (in small doses).

A mix of 20 drops of Tea Tree Oil plus one drop of liquid soap and 8 ounces of pure water is added to a spray bottle. Shake and then spray to the areas where the mold was found.


http://www.arrowplastic.com/store/images/products/24_25BCAE.jpg

Consider a diffuser running in the bathroom or the hallway..

From : http://hybridrastamama.com/can-essential-oils-really-eliminate-toxic-mold/


For the best effect, use a cold-air diffuser which does not heat the oils and destroy the anti-microbial properties.

You will want to diffuse your oil blend for 24-72 hours, non-stop, in the space(s) where mold was found. If possible, and for best results, leave the room closed and sealed during this intensive diffusing.

This will allow maximum penetration and absorption of the essential oil blend. My suggestion is that you repeat this two or three times depending on how bad the mold infestation was....


Essential oil Blends: Tea Tree Oil, Oil of Eucalyptus, Oil of Peppermint

Study on using Essential Oils on treating MOLD growths : http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/26998/PDF

In the study, Tea Tre Oil ranked second to Rosemary - however RoseMary Oil is considered a neuro-toxicant. It can cause lethal damage to the kidneys..

Cleaning the Black Stain

Many folks have tried hydrogen peroxide (wear gloves!). The bleaching effects of concentrated 30% peroxide can create damage. Don't let it get on your skin or eyes. It can be carefully brushed into the tile grout and will usually seep in and kill the mold and bleach out the dark stains.

Recovering from MOLD toxicity

Mercola says reduce sugars - http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/01/recovery-from-toxic-mold-exposure.aspx

They also say change diet to avoid these - alcohol, wheat and wheat products, rye, peanuts, cottonseed oil, corn, barley, sorghum, sugar from sugar cane and sugar beets, hard cheeses.

Mercola also says a good pro-biotic will help. Garlic Ginger and Cayenne are good. Nutritional supplements recommended are: Glutathione, krill oil, Artichoke leaf extract, Vitamin D.

AIR PURIFICATION

Mold likes the high humidity areas. Mold likes it when moisture resides on wood, paper, surfaces which may have a biofilm (showers/tubs). UV air purifiers may be useful, with dust/mold filtration.

Medical attack using fungicides (last resorts)

Like having to resort to a course of antibiotics, out-of-balance situations can happen. In life threatening situations radical measures sometimes are used. The drug called voriconazole is the drug of choice to fight fungal infections anywhere in the body. one 200 milligram (mg) each day, for 7 to 14 days. The length of treatment depends on the severity of the infection.

Amphotericin B. This is another class of antifungal medication that is effective for treatment against Aspergillus niger. It causes the fungal cell wall of Aspergillus niger to burst, thereby killing it. It also deprives Aspergillus niger of electrolytes and nutrients, which can also lead to fungal death.

There are dangers with using internal antifungal medications ! http://www.globalrph.com/voriconazole.htm Liver damage. Contraindicated when liver function tests show damage is present. Amphotericin B - with an Intravenous overdose, it can result in potentially fatal cardiac or cardiorespiratory arrest. Using drugs to treat systemic mold infections requires very skilled practitioners able to control and deal with side effects.

[Althena]

It's very important to keep surfaces moisture free specially in humid environments. I clean shower tiles and kitchen with CS and never seen the mold develop.

[ghostrider]

I have extensive working knowledge about black mold, in the apartment rental business now for 27 years ... the person will want to leave the dwelling for three days , run alot of fans and fresh air through the stucture after removing the mold with a bottle of water mixed with bleach and wear a mask... you are dealing with particles that are Airborne and require water leaking and not much fresh air to survive... finding whats leaking and repairing it is the next step ... any wood that is wet and had mold on it should be cut out bagged and sealed to be thrown away... anyone working around it should wear a mask /respirator ... it can cause serious respiratory problems, headaches, trouble sleeping, and a cold that just wont go away... hope this helps, tell your friend , feel better...

[Sunny-side-up]

To help show how dangerous mold can be/is:
Mould in your home can kill as actress Brittany Murphy's death linked to fungus in LA mansion


Mould in your home can kill as actress Brittany Murphy's death linked to fungus in LA mansion
By DAVID HURST
UPDATED: 16:08, 29 March 2013

45
View comments
Brittany Murphy
Tragic death: At the time of her death, there were rumours that the 32-year-old actress had died of a drug overdose or an eating disorder
A more unlikely end to the Hollywood dream could not seem possible - but this week it was reported that the deaths of actress Brittany Murphy and her British screenwriter husband Simon Monjack might have been caused by mould growing in their luxury Los Angeles home.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1297862/Brittany-Murphy-Mould-home-kill-actresss-death-linked-fungus-LA-mansion.html#ixzz4EacNCThU
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Now, in both cases, the cause of death has been recorded as pneumonia and anaemia, and experts have suggested mould could be to blame, damaging the couple’s respiratory systems.
U.S. public health officials are said to be inspecting the mansion Murphy and Monjack lived in.
It may seem extraordinary, but in fact mould in the home is a common health problem, affecting tens of thousands of people in the UK, explains Malcolm Richardson, Professor of medical mycology (the study of mould) at the University of Manchester.
‘Britain is especially prone to moulds, due to it being damp and cold so often, and because a lot of the housing is old,’ he says.
‘Yet compared with countries such as America and Finland, there’s not much awareness of mould or the health damage it can cause - it can be fatal.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1297862/Brittany-Murphy-Mould-home-kill-actresss-death-linked-fungus-LA-mansion.html#ixzz4Eacf9IAp
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1297862/Brittany-Murphy-Mould-home-kill-actresss-death-linked-fungus-LA-mansion.html#ixzz4EacFzAUe
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


‘Mould is an opportunistic fungus, and grows aggressively in the body, stopping the organs working properly - so it can be lethal,’ says Professor Richardson.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1297862/Brittany-Murphy-Mould-home-kill-actresss-death-linked-fungus-LA-mansion.html#ixzz4Ead7Ana2
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1297862/Brittany-Murphy-Mould-home-kill-actresss-death-linked-fungus-LA-mansion.html

[ditting]

As a New York State Mold Assessor and Home Inspector I have encountered my fair share of mold within homes. New York State now requires anyone who remediates mold professionally to have a license. Mold Inspections, Mold Assessment Reports, Protocols for remediating mold, and Mold clearance after the licensed Remediator has performed the remediation are performed by a State licensed Mold Assessor such as myself.

First of all, what folks refer to as concerning or dangerous "black mold" usually is the Stachybotrys genus (pronounced:stacky-bah-triss). Within the Stachybotrys genus there are several species. There are also many other types of mold which is black in color. If you see black mold growing you will not know what type of mold it is unless you have it tested. The type of mold usually doesn't influence to method of remediation.

Mold spores are found in the normal outside and indoor air of our homes. Mold spore count inside should be equal to or less than the mold spore count outside. If it is greater than we know there is a mold problem. There are no standards for spore counts set by the State, Dept. of Health, etc. for mold. The reason being is that it affects each individual differently. One person may live in a home with high mold count and be fine where another person may have a low or medium count and have adverse health effects.

As far as remediating mold, I wouldn't suggest doing it yourself if you think you may be suffering ill effects from mold exposure. I can only suggest hiring a qualified professional mold remediator to treat the mold as necessary. Mold remediation requires several steps to achieve success:

1. A thorough inspection should be performed to determine the extent of the affected area. There may be mold which is not visible or not readily accessible.
2. A protocol should be written and presented to the client and contractor performing the work. The protocol should include the scope of work and suggested method for remediation.
3. The mold remediation company should set up containment as necessary to separate areas not affected by mold and prevent the spread of mold and spores. This is usually 6 mil plastic taped at the seams running negative air pressure.
4. The remediator shall treat the mold with EPA approved products. Usually this is a Biocide/Fungicide to kill the mold, A thorough HEPA vacuuming of the entire area, and application of an Encapsulant to prevent future mold growth.

This is just to treat the mold which is only half of the problem. An evaluation of conditions CONDUCIVE to mold should be performed and appropriate actions to eliminate these conditions are necessary in prevent continued or future mold growth. Mold growth is the result of an abundance of water and a lack of ventilation.

Bill, if your friend has mold in her bathroom my question would be "Does she have a ventilation fan? If so, does she use it?" Any time I see a bathroom with a shower or tub in it without a ventilation fan I call it out, mold or not. Other common areas to find mold are attics and basements. Both are susceptible to poor ventilation and accumulation of moisture from a variety of sources. If anyone else has issues with mold in their home I would be glad to field questions.

Professional mold remediation is not always practical or within budget. If you would like to do it yourself I suggest looking into some the already established protocols from the various existing authorities such as the Dept. of Health to get an idea for what the pros do. There are various products out there that are designed to treat mold on different surfaces. Keep in mind bleach only works on non-porous surfaces like stainless steel or certain plastics. Mold growing on wood or drywall requires a different product in order to be effective. Sometimes removing and replacing the building materials is cheaper, easier, or more effective than treating it for mold. I recommend finding a product that you feel comfortable using and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

I cannot speak on some of the natural remedies folks have posted as I have no experience with them. I will say it is important to set containment with 6 mil plastic and create a negative air chamber with a fan terminating outside to prevent the spread of spores. Otherwise, once you disrupt the mold growth you can spread it elsewhere similar to asbestos fibers. Also, it is critical to protect yourself with the proper PPE: gloves, tyvek suit, respirator, etc.

I hope this is helpful to you. If you have follow up questions please feel free!

[bettye198]

You are singing to the choir Bill. Talk about timing. I have been going through holistic treatment for Fungus in my body, especially lungs for months. Horrible cough. Right now much better but the resolution is not done yet. We discovered mold in the courtyard wall that spread into the house. We notified our landlady as we live in the beach community and we get fog, moist cool air more than any sun that pops up in the afternoon. The HOA will not cover. The Homeowners insurance will not cover as well. The stucco is torn down to the screet and lower framing and it is a mess. Now, she has to have construction done starting tomorrow that may carry all the way up the framing.

Here is the problem. If you have tile laid in a courtyard that is not code and it is smack up against the stucco you are in big trouble. There is no where for the screet to breathe and mold WILL affect the framing. People who have pretty gardens in their courtyard with dirt flush against the walls of the house or garage is also in big trouble. Even termite companies will admonish owners of that.

So hopefully this does not mean I will have a gaping mammoth hole in my wall and that the construction will remedy this problem and my fungus issue will abate.

Thankfully I have been on supurb homeopathics and herbs and supplements to try to remedy the fungus. But it has been too damn long.

[avid]

I have a powerful ozonator, lock down parts of the house (or a room), blast it for a few hours and it's cleansed, no bugs, no smell. This is used in old folks homes to get rid of room smells, in hospitals to purify sections, etc.
Surely this will kill off any mould spores? Ozonators are bleach-machines of the highest calibre, and I have used them for years, you can hire them, please try this in an affected mouldy home. Any views on ozonators?

[Marikins]

Extremely excellent advice. Please be careful if you remediate it yourself.

[latina]

Bill I hope your friend gets well son. Every time I am in need of finding natural remedies for anything my first source is always: www.earthclinic.com so I went to the website and this is the link to the section of mold: http://www.earthclinic.com/cures/mold.html
This is an example of someone sharing natural remedies for mold in this website:

MOLD RECOVERY PROTOCOL...
I suffered from mold poisoning and the problem is that the mold settles in the body so you have to detoxify it. The best method that I found was The Gut and Psychology Diet while also including coconut oil on a regular basis. As far as antifungals coconut oil is a great one. I also used olive leaf and organic apple cider vinegar. The ACV (Apple Cider Vinegar organic with mother) should be taken before each meal, a few tablespoons in about an ounce of warm water. Cooking in all of the healthy fats helps you to detoxify the fungus... And making the fermented foods also helps to restore the good bacteria. There is HOPE, the body can repair itself.

In addition to this, it is best to flush the liver every few weeks. If your symptoms worsen, do a Apple Cider Vinegar enema to flush out the toxins, detox baths, or you can also take activated charcoal with plenty of water. Repeat the enema until you get clear fluids, take KELP and other SEAWEEDS to replenish minerals that you are missing AND drink plenty of homemade juices before and after a flush, or plenty of fresh JUICY fruits to replace minerals. Also take unsulphured black strap molasses to replenish minerals as well.

Diet should be based on Weston A. Price and GAP, these foods will heal you and plenty of bone broth will heal. I get my meat through a coop, best bones out there.... The broths alone did amazing things for us!


Hope this helps, as I stated before that's my primary source of knowledge because they are people from around the world sharing their own results....

[Betty]

Recently we had some mold and came across this YouTube video. We had used bleach in the past only to have the mold come back. I believe it's in this video the explanation for this is that bleach only cleans topically and doesn't get at the roots. The product he recommends, "Concorbium" I've used and it worked well. Then we purchased a dehumidifier to keep the humidity below 45% and the mold problem has gone away. We also painted with a mold resistant paint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj1WJFqos6Y


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mj1WJFqos6Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[enfoldedblue]

hi I have also been dealing with black mold issues. Bleach is very ineffective and only bleaches it making it less visible. Some of the best natural solutions include clove oil and fermented vinegar (not distilled). However one has to be VERY careful when attempting to remove as the mold will pump out spores when theeatened. This is why it is often best to have it professionally dealt with. A knowledgeable professional will have suitable safety gear. It is so hard to effectively eliminate that some people move and take nothing with them.

In terms of treatment infrared saunas are very helpful. Alpha lipoic acid has also shown promise...even when the source of the mold cannot be successfully elliminated.

Good luck to your friend!

[Kari Lynn]

I would caution greatly a person trying to get rid of a dangerous black mold, with out proper knowledge or equipment to do so. My husband was trained (HVAC) to remove many hazardous substances. Some molds react to bleach negatively. In that it dries it out, yes, but then causes it to become even more airborne. If mold has become ingrained in, drywall or and wood, the materials should be removed completely. The material then needs to be bagged in heavy, non porous bags, marked and disposed of properly. And as some one said earlier, a negative air environment needs to be established before even disturbing the mold to remove it. Then the negative air has to remain in place for a period of time after removal is finished to prevent air borne spoor from spreading.

Medically, I have no clue of cure. I know that it has very severe symptoms, crippling and could even be fatal.

[Dennis Leahy]

My basement flooded 2 years ago, and some black mold was discovered in a wall that was removed. I have heard the horror stories of how hard it is to kill, and that the chemicals can leave your home permanently toxic (the cure may be worse than the disease.) I told the water remediation company I was VERY reluctant for ANY chemical to be used - even bleach - and that I wanted advance warning of what they want to use so I could research it.

I was very happily surprised to find that they had a natural, non-toxic, alternative, mold killer based on the herb "thyme." It worked very well. This was one of the largest water remediation companies in the US (called "Service Master Restore"), so it should be widely available (in the US, at least.) 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.

[Snoweagle]

I was conducting a Mechanical and Electrical survey of a multi-storey building in London in the mid 90's. This was in banking. I was entering each of the basement plant rooms and ancillary storage areas inspecting the condition of the service runs for preparation for project planning. All the doors were locked and unmarked and the monster set of keys were a burden to sort. All was going well, slowly, and a boring chore that had to be done.

Then I opened perhaps the last door at the end of a long corridor. I was already experiencing relief at this being the last door. So I found the key and opened the door.I froze with what I saw. This building was a banking establishment so many of the secure areas were filled with nondescript paper paraphernalia or servers or plant rooms.

I stood at the doorway and my whole body bristled. My senses screamed at me that this thing was alive. It "saw" me too, I sensed it, I felt it. It was tangible.

I was looking directly at the buildings Macerator. This is a device that takes all the human soil waste and breaks it up into a slurry before it enters the sewer system. It was glistening wet, The concrete around it's base formed a wet sodden ring and so to at the top. There were three small commercial lights lighting this room yet the walls were black. And I mean black with mold. I turned and looked at the light switch I had had touched on entry and it too was covered. Using the keys I flicked it off and left. I reported my findings and continued my day.

That evening after a meal my health declined with what I had assumed to be the symptoms of Wiels disease which manifest as flu like pains but rapidly worsen. I immediately made the connection and made my way the the Teaching Hospital near Tottenham Court Rd. By the time I arrived I could barely walk. I was given some treatment and pills. My rapid response had saved me. The symptoms improved and cleared over a couple of days.

What was striking to me at the time was the bodies degeneration was so rapid. Just decanting this event here and my body prickles with the memory. I came across Black Mold in thousands of places but this room was definitely "alive" and it was kick arse frightening on recollection.

Dampness and water in a poor airflow environment will allow mold to grow.

[Snoweagle]

Mouldy old dough, 1972, for those of us that remember:-)
ZRPK425wLuQ

[MorningSong]

About 8 years ago, I got a bad case of asthmatic bronchitis caused by black mold and its toxins, which, after my diagnosis I found growing in my bedroom..under the bed where I had stashed things in plastic storage bins, inside the bins on leather goods and things that I had stored there, on the wooden parque flooring creeping up the wall behind the headboard of the bed. I had only vaguely smelled the odor of mold about a week before I got sick.

I was told to throw out anything that had mold visibly growing on it or at least wash it very thouroughly with bleach and sulfur soap and let it dry out in the sun outside during the day. I had to treat the walls and flooring several times with bleach and expose the surfaces to UV light (supposedly to kill the spores). I used a IR lamp to speed up the drying process for the walls and the flooring and I bought a secondhand tanning lamp which I pointed at one section at a time for 6 hours each. It did seem to work at the time.

I had to take 2 rounds of Ciprox antibiotic (which only made things worse because IMO it kills bacteria not molds) along with broncodialators and corticosteriods.... yuck! I was taken to the ER three times during the ordeal ( about a month) as I could exhale but couldn't inhale to save my soul! This is NOT something I would wish on anyone, foe or friend!

I moved out of that house a few years later, so I don't know if the wall and floor treatment really worked. I haven't had any more problems with my health caused by mold as far as I know here in my new abode.

It is very, very important to find the mold if you think that is the problem. And remember, when you see "mold", what you are actually seeing is the flowering of the spores.. the actual fungus is microscopic and practically invisible to our eyes... and its "roots" can extend over huge distances if the climate where it's growing is to its linking.

Here are 2 links to Dr. Mercola's site about mold and treatment:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/31/fungus-hiding-in-your-house-and-making-you-ill.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/01/recovery-from-toxic-mold-exposure.aspx

[DeDukshyn]

Black mold is ubiquitous on the entire planet -- you can't get really "get rid" of it, unless you live in a aerospace engineering cleanroom or something. I think most people don't realize this fact; but the fact it is so, means that most people are exposed to it very often, albeit in very tiny amounts - one wouldn't want to be in a situation where you might be breathing the dust / spores directly- that would be excessive. You can often find it on old onions, as it is one of the few micro organisms that can survive the onion's potent essential oils (it's hardy, which is one of the reasons it's difficult to get rid of).

I don't have any remedies (other than ensuring no detriment to one's immune system and to avoid breathing dust that might contain it), but I just want to note that if black mold did cause illness to humans on sight or on contact, like we are often led to believe, then we would all be sick. Immune system is a major factor. I have a relative that has ongoing issues with various fungal infections; mainstream doctors couldn't seem to help, and the naturopathic doctor said he has too much mercury in his body (mainly due to excessive tooth fillings) for his immune system to be in good enough shape to fight them off properly (compromised immune system). He's already started to get some amalgams replaced with ceramics, but it's a lot of costly work. This is just an anecdote.

[Jantje]

I personally had black mold on the floor in the shower. I used a commercial chemical cleaning solution that was specifically designed to battle mold.
It did not only destroy the mold but also the cement filling between the tiles. This floor has to be replaced now.
Beware !

besides that the mould came back afterwards. I use vinegar when I encounter mold from now on.

[Nick Matkin]

Here's a short podcast and transcript (https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4494) on the black mold subject from the usually grounded Skeptiod website run by Brian Dunning. Perhaps it might help.

I know some people have a problem with Dunning, but perhaps they should they get over it and at least consider what he has to say on a range of subjects.

(I think his dealing with the Diana death 'accident' was far too superficial, but on HAARP (https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4122)and the 'STENDEC (https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4231)' mystery my experience suggests he's spot on.)

Nick

[Baby Steps]

I work in a small underground office, at one point it got flooded and this stuff started.

Eventually, it was dried out, painted, re-carpeted etc. There is one black section on a desk,its that cheap chip board that retains the damp. At the time I wiped it with a tissue soaked in tea tree oil, and this was very effective, the black just breaks up. It came back, and I have just re-cleaned the same way but more thoroughly.

I am now going to get some Oregano oil to help my lungs resist the spores!

Australians do those steam treatments for the lungs (hot water with essential oils in a bowl, towel over head), they do Tea Tree oil, & Eucalyptus, very effective!

[Watching from Cyprus]

Hi Bill & Friend :-)

Tooth root problem: 10 drops of MMS in a 4cl shot glass of water. Gurgle (do not swallow) this in 3 dozes for 1 minute, and it should be gone. If not repeat every 3-4 hours and it should will be gone within 24 hours. Remember to drink clean water after each gurgling session.

To clean and regulate the body, take 2 table spoons of Organic Apple Cider Vinegar in a glass of water first thing in the morning and again before bedtime. Strongest natural antibiotic on the planet.

That should be it.

Love and light
Peter

[DeDukshyn]

...

Australians do those steam treatments for the lungs (hot water with essential oils in a bowl, towel over head), they do Tea Tree oil, & Eucalyptus, very effective!

hehe :) reminded me of this scene from "Crocodile Dundee"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUxOdFJEDdg

[bettye198]

The House is one thing, but your health is another. If you can find a practitioner like nutritional response tester advanced, acupuncturist, naturopath or Chiropractor who can deal with these products, and muscle test you for them:
Mycocanchord homeopathic from Energetix in Atlanta, GA. ( usual dose is 20 drops in water twice a day maybe more)
Fung Dx capsules from Systemic Formulas in Utah. I had to take up to 2/day usually 1 now. I recommend testing though because they are strong herbal/homeopathics and dynamic. No side effects from me and I am sensitive. In addition, you must have some product to wash this out of the system like ACX 1/dayfrom Systemic Formulas or Antronex 4-6/day from Standard Process in Wisconsin. These products are so pure and go back to the mid or early last century. They work but again, removal of the mold in the house has to be done.

[LindyLou22]

Loving the wealth of knowledge shared here. I don't believe anyone has mentioned light. We leave lights on in the basement to alleviate mold problems down there. I use a lot of rosemary essential oil, and I didn't realize it had any toxicity. Will look into that.

There is a lady named Ingrid Naiman who is an alternative medicine genius. She loves to watch blood cells under her microscope and has extensively studied the effects of mold on blood cells. She recommends products made from orange peel. She's very thorough and shares her experiences. This website is a treasure trove of information.

http://www.moldmisery.com/herbs.html

***

[avid]

Was editing my correspondence from early 2015, and came across this by Soren Dreier, who said fungus was the hidden cause of most major disease.
Apols if previously referenced
http://sorendreier.com/fungus-the-hidden-cause-of-almost-every-major-disease/
He advocates coconut oil, cider vinegar, garlic etc etc. Well worth a read. Using organic coconut oil now instead of veggie oil, but not for steaks, that's butter!

[Constance]

Moldy - The documentary

Snippets from the documentary - >


45 million people in the US at any given time, live in a moldy building


Common symptoms are brain fog, cognitive dysfunction, mood issues, sleep issues, autoimmune, inflammatory problems, joint pain, fatigue


Exposure to mold, water damage conditions has been widely documented to cause significant neurocognitive effects. One of the most disturbing was a study in Poland of young children in water damaged buildings that showed significant IQ drops


It was really in the 1970's, perhaps, 1969 that fungicides were added to paints for the first time. Unfortunately, those fungicides created mutations in fungi such as the fungi that lived beyond the fungicide created toxins that made us sick and ones that were from non-mutants did not make us sick. We put the fungicides in the paint, we are paying a price.


Mold, certainly many of them, make a poisonous by-product called a mycotoxin, so it's a mold poison. For example, penicillium is a mold. The poison it makes is called pencillin. Brewers yeast is the mold, the poison it makes is called alcohol, and of course we all know that alcohol is neurotoxic. Few people know, although this was published in the year 2002, I believe, in the journal of the medical association, Dr. Ruth Etzel published this; that our corn supply in America is commonly contaminated with these fungal metabolites, that peanuts in America are commonly contaminated with these fungal byproducts, even today we are learning more and more about our coffee supply in America being contaminated with these fungal products. These are not okay to eat in large doses. So if you love that cup of coffee, and you drink a moldy coffee everyday, it may have an adverse affect on your health...


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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Dr. Mercola interviews Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker M.D about exposure to molds.

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You can read the entire Transcript here (http://mercola.fileburst.com/PDF/ExpertInterviewTranscripts/InterviewWithDrShoemaker.pdf).


Website: Survivingmold.com (https://www.survivingmold.com/)

[Constance]

Dr. Andrew Campbell discusses some of the ways exposure to toxigenic molds and mycotoxins affect the human body.


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[Bill Ryan]

Moldy - The documentary

Dr. Andrew Campbell discusses some of the ways exposure to toxigenic molds and mycotoxins affect the human body.

Thank you! :thumbsup:

I'd looked up this thread because although I started it 3 years ago on behalf of a friend, now I have black mold in my house. OMG. :facepalm:

This is what I found in the roof corner behind a cupboard...

http://projectavalon.net/black_mold.jpg

... and on looking up in the roof space, it's full of the stuff.

Now, I've not had it analyzed. But it's mold, and it's black. It doesn't look very benign!

Despite this, I don't have any obvious health issues. But it may be simply because I'm in pretty good shape anyway. Interestingly, though, what I have noticed is that while i have a ton of energy up in the high mountains (see this thread (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?93672-Another-vicarious-adventure-and-another-Avalon-Cairn--for-the-Wawa-Grande-this-time-) for my expeditions to search for the elusive Wawa Grande :) ), and I always feel pretty good when I go into the nearest town 25 miles away on errands, at home I often feel quite fatigued.

And my dog Mara — who, naturally, has a hugely sensitive nose! — rarely comes in the house. She always prefers to sleep outside in the grass, even when it's cold and raining. I only made that [possible] connection just now.

So really, I'm just sharing this out of interest. Clearly, I need to get it out of there fast. That means replacing a whole bunch of moldy roof timbers.

But 'fast' doesn't happen easily here, and the main factor is the weather: that's because to work on the roof there needs to be little or no rain for a couple weeks at least, and there's no chance of that until July at the earliest. (Here on the equator, there are two seasons: wet, Jan—June; and dry, July—Dec.) And even so, August—September are more likely to be dry for a stable period.

So, an interesting circle. :) My next job is to go back and study all the links and videos posted earlier on the thread.

[Tomkoyote]

In the mean time, go to a hardware store get 'Pool shock' at least 65% calcium hypochlorite. Do not buy if it says Sodium hypo (must say on the bag 65% or 70% or 78% Calcium Hypo). Put a tablespoon of the granule in a bottle of water or spray bottle, shake well to dissolve. Spray any affected area. Repeat every 3to4 hrs. Cal hypo is also dubbed MMS2, so it is safe.
You can safely sanitize your hands, body with it but use a less concentrated solution (like 1 teasp/lit.)

[Trisher]

If you have MMS then mix up around 70 to 80 drops of mms with activator...you do not need to dilute but if you do then using just a small amount of water will slow it down. Place under/near mold. Close up the space..stay out until it has off gassed. Probably 8 or so hours. This should kill the mold according to Dr Andreas Kalcker. If you wish to target one corner you could halve the number of drops and tape up plastic around the area and place the drops in their glass container inside this sealed off space.

Good luck Bill.

Trisher

[Bill Ryan]

Thank you! That's most interesting about MMS combating mold. I can believe it.

And yes: I know Dr Andreas Kalcker, and have spent some quality time with him. He's a very smart guy. He used to manufacture MMS for retail, but was shut down by the EU when MMS was outlawed in Europe.

Whether using MMS or MMS2, the problem I have is that there's a lot of mold. Not just a little patch. Large roof timbers are covered, and need to be replaced. I was just now going to take and post a photo of all the ferns growing out of the antique roof tiles, but the sun was in the wrong direction. :)

It's basically an 80-year old farmhouse with a porous, leaking roof in a climate which is often quite wet and foggy 6 months of the year. That's like 40 straight years of damp roof timbers, enough to create quite an ecosystem up there. :)

Bats seem to like it, though, and I regularly have bats in my bedroom flying round in fast circles like something on the end of a string, never hitting a thing. Unlike birds, though, they're easy to set free... just open a door or window, and they head straight out like a guided missile. They're actually really beautiful things, like large flying mice.

Anyway! Wildlife report notwithstanding, it'd need a vast amount of undiluted MMS to deal with what seems to be up there — or a pretty large amount of calcium hypochlorite. But thanks again, and I'll definitely investigate that... I know who I can ask.

:thumbsup:

[happyuk]

Would a suitably industrial dehumidifier help given that the house will be subject to so much damp for a large portion of the year?

A different situation, but I remember moving into a newly built apartment block, which was so new in fact that the landlord had provided for us a large dehumidifier to combat the amount of moisture still remaining in the building work. We would switch this on before leaving for work in the morning, and I never failed to be astounded by the amount of water to be removed from it on getting home in the evening.

The builder explained that new buildings tend to have very good insulation to comply with building regulations, the downside being there is little ventilation in terms of drafts; only fans, extractors, air con etc. plus of course open windows, which may not be practical for security reasons. These days they are pretty much air tight with a concrete base and plastered interiors that take a long time to dry out properly.

Other than that, I would keep all items of furniture about 2 inches away from the walls especially the outside walls and including any beds. Wipe the walls and skirting boards down with anti-mould stuff (Dettol make a great one) and do this for about 3 months. Other advice I've been given is to try and fit a stronger motor in any extraction fans for the bathrooms but I think there is a limit of the motor you can put in fans, I'm sure others on Avalon will know more about this than I do.

[Bill Ryan]

Would a suitably industrial dehumidifier help given that the house will be subject to so much damp for a large portion of the year?

Thanks for the suggestion! But no humidifier could do the necessary job.

This below is a little extreme, but it's a real photo. :) Something like this happens several times a year. (What you see there is just heavy rain.)

http://projectavalon.net/storeroom_in_rain_sm.jpg

During the day, I always have the doors open, and I keep the windows open 24/7 unless I'm out for the day.

The very old roof really does leak like a sieve. I have heavy plastic sheets laid out above all the room ceiling spaces, but they steadily accumulate water like shallow paddling pools and sometimes that spills through into the house. (There, all the floors are tiled: no carpet could survive. :) ) Whenever that happens, I just use it as an opportunity to mop the floors clean.

This really isn't a normal house. It's a beautiful place! Here's a photo... when it's sunny, it's gorgeous.

http://projectavalon.net/Bill's_house_sm.jpg

...but OMG, the work it needs never ends. And while I can happily handle the rain and the occasional flood, the mold, the presence of which is I now realize is hardly surprising, is the real problem I now have to eliminate totally.

:focus: — because this thread is about health and wellness, not my house. :)

It's astonishing to me now that it never occurred to me that a great deal of mold simply had to be there. I was just blind to the entire notion. I've never lived in a moldy house before, as best I know.

Constance wrote above (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?91913-BLACK-MOLD-symptoms-remedies-treatment-elimination&p=1291651&viewfull=1#post1291651) (as a summary from the documentary Moldy):


45 million people in the US at any given time, live in a moldy building.

That's about 15% of the population. I'm guessing that can be mapped on to Europe in equal or greater proportions: possibly greater, as there are many more older houses.

And that really is food for thought. Yet another modern-day, heath-compromising epidemic that few are aware of.... as if there weren't enough already.

[Constance]

Flash, one of our beloved members who is currently on sabbatical, and who has been following this thread with great interest, has requested that I share this interesting article.



Mold may mean bad news for the brain




WASHINGTON – Moldy houses are hard on the lungs, and new results in mice suggest that they could also be bad for the brain. Inhaling mold spores made mice anxious and forgetful, researchers reported November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (https://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=a9490c38-27f0-4099-8725-3d7eab5e7989&cKey=fcc53b77-f174-4e09-9d22-ccceb76aee81&mKey=54c85d94-6d69-4b09-afaa-502c0e680ca7).

Cheryl Harding, a psychologist at the City University of New York, and colleagues dripped low doses of spores from the toxic mold Stachybotrys into mouse noses three times per week. After three weeks, the mice didn’t look sick. But they had trouble remembering a fearful place. The mice were also more anxious than normal counterparts. The anxiety and memory deficits went along with decreases in new brain cells in the hippocampus — a part of the brain that plays a role in memory — compared with control mice.

Harding and colleagues also found that the behaviors linked to increased inflammatory proteins in the hippocampus. Exposure to mold’s toxins and structural proteins may trigger an immune response in the brain. The findings, Harding says, may help explain some of the conditions that people living in moldy buildings complain about, such as anxiety and cognitive problems.



Source: Sciencenews.org (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mold-may-mean-bad-news-brain)

She also wanted to make mention that hazmat protection is really required when treating any kind of moldy surface.

[Bill Ryan]

Inhaling mold spores made mice anxious and forgetful

That's hilarious. I've probably got anxious, forgetful mice in the roof as well. :)

But of course, I get the serious point. It's a systemic situation, where one might not feel sick or ill, but just be running on reduced capacity: a little less energetic, a little less quick, a little less aware, a little less together, slightly more vulnerable to other factors. Just like a kind of gradual erosion, a dulling down of everything.

And another serious point... it might even account for my not even thinking of the possibility that the mold was there.

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. :)

[Constance]

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.

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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.

[Constance]

Fungal intelligence

Nxn2LlBJDl0

[Hym]

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

[Bill Ryan]

Fungal intelligence

Nxn2LlBJDl0

WOW. :bump:

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. :sun:

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.

[Bill Ryan]

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.


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.

[Constance]

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/ (https://moldsafesolutions.com/parasites/)

[Forest Denizen]

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! :clapping:

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

XuKjBIBBAL8

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 :p :heart:

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

[petra]

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.

[petra]

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?)

[AriG]

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)

[Bill Ryan]

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 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/member.php?7088-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! :bigsmile: ) 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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1wA8Akx5Q) with Dr Shoemaker in Constance's post #31 (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?91913-BLACK-MOLD-symptoms-remedies-treatment-elimination&p=1291651&viewfull=1#post1291651), 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 (http://survivingmold.com) for $15. But there's a free version here — https://vcstest.com (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. :P 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.

[AutumnW]

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.

[AutumnW]

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.

[Trisher]

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.


sXL5j0jIIvs

[Agape]

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.


sXL5j0jIIvs

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.firstpost.com/india/covid-19-triggering-rare-deadly-fungal-infection-in-recovered-patients-claims-delhi-hospital-9112041.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 !!



🖐🏿

[Trisher]

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.


sXL5j0jIIvs

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.firstpost.com/india/covid-19-triggering-rare-deadly-fungal-infection-in-recovered-patients-claims-delhi-hospital-9112041.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!