S3 Episode 23: Is Mould Making Your Child Sick? Hidden Signs, Mycotoxins and What to Do First with Dr Jill Crista

Welcome to My Mighty Quinn

In this powerful episode, I’m joined by Dr Jill Crista — naturopathic doctor, bestselling author of Break the Mould, and one of the world’s leading experts in mould-related illness, PANS and PANDAS.

Get the Mould Free Guide >> Signs, Checklist and First Steps for Parents

Dr Jill’s work sits at the intersection of environment, immunity and brain health — helping families understand how hidden mould and mycotoxin exposure can affect a child’s behaviour, nervous system, development and overall health.

Together, we explore a concept that changes everything: That mould is not simply an allergy problem.

It can be a powerful biological stressor affecting the brain, immune system, gut, hormones and nervous system — sometimes sitting beneath symptoms that appear neurological, behavioural or psychiatric.

This conversation takes us beyond visible mould and musty smells — into the hidden world of water-damaged buildings, mycotoxins, neuroinflammation and the body’s growing toxic load.

It is both confronting and deeply hopeful, because when we understand what is driving a child’s symptoms, we can stop chasing each one individually — and begin supporting the body in the right order.

Key takeaways

• Why mould illness is so much more than an allergy or respiratory issue
• How hidden mould and mycotoxins can affect the brain, immune system and nervous system
• Why mould exposure may show up as anxiety, rage, tics, OCD, fatigue, sensory issues or poor sleep
• Why children can react very differently from adults living in the same environment
• Why symptoms can seem to appear suddenly when the body’s toxic load becomes too great
• The connection between mould, neuroinflammation, PANS and PANDAS
• The importance of looking at the home, school and wider environment
• Why removing or reducing exposure must come before detoxification
• How aggressive detox protocols can overwhelm an already struggling child
• Why healing must follow a careful sequence of avoidance, nourishment, protection, repair and recovery

This episode is about asking a different question.

Not simply what condition does my child have?

But what is their body being exposed to?

Because children do not all respond to mould in the same way.

And when we recognise mould as part of the wider biological picture, we uncover a hidden piece of the puzzle — one that may be keeping a child’s brain and body stuck in survival.

Resources

Mould Free Guide: Signs, Checklist and First Steps for Parents

Dr Jill's Website

Transcript

Lucia Silver (00:00)
Is mould making your child sick? Hidden signs, mycotoxins, and what to do first. Hello and welcome back to my Mighty Quinn, a mother's conversations with world leading experts. I'm Lucia Silva, founder of the Brain Health Movement and mama to that Mighty Quinn. Today we are talking about something that I believe is one of the most overlooked, misunderstood, and under-recognized drivers behind so many children's and adults neurological

behavioural, emotional and immune challenges. Mould. And not just mould in the obvious sense, not the little patch in the bathroom corner or the musty smell in an old house. We're talking about hidden mould, water damaged buildings, schools, damp bedrooms, tiny leaks behind walls and homes people believe are perfectly fine. And the silent havoc that those moulds and mycotoxins can wreak on the brain, on the immune system, hormones.

gut, nervous system and our behaviour. Because mould is so pernicious and so much more than an allergy problem. It can sit quietly underneath anxiety, rage, tics, OCD, sensory issues, chronic fatigue, headaches, poor sleep, gut problems, mast cell symptoms, immune dysfunction, pans and pandas flares, this list is long.

hormonal changes and children who seem to become entirely different versions of themselves. And if you followed my journey with Quinn, you'll know that this is also deeply personal for me. When Quinn first became unwell with severe tics, emotional dysregulation and anxiety, sensory issues associated with his pans, I did eventually realize that mould and mycotoxins were a major factor in the symptoms he was expressing.

And within the perfect storm that was brewing for him, mould was very much the straw that broke the camel's back. But once we began to understand that piece of the puzzle and address it properly alongside nervous system work and immune support, nutrition and detoxification, everything started to make much more sense. So today's conversation is going to be absolutely vital for any parent whose child has symptoms that nobody can fully explain.

And I am so thrilled that joining me today is one of the leading voices in mould-related illness. Dr. Jill Crista is a pioneering naturopathic doctor, bestselling author, devoted educator, and creative innovator whose superpower is making complex medical concepts simple and digestible. And boy, do we love that. She focuses on conditions that can cause injury to the brain and nervous system, including mould-related illness, pans and pandas, Lyme disease,

concussion and post-COVID symptoms. And she's also the author of a fantastic bestselling book, Please Get This, Break the Mould, Five Tools to Conquer Mould and Take Back Your Health, a clear and practical guide that has helped me and many people recognize mould-related illness and understand the steps they can take to begin reclaiming their health. And through these books, products and educational resources, Dr. Jill has helped thousands of people understand and recover their health following mould exposure.

And what I love about Dr. Jill is her extraordinary ability to take a subject that can feel frightening, overwhelming, and incredibly complex and make it understandable, practical, and hopeful. In this conversation, we're going to explore the hidden signs parents may be missing, how mould can affect a child's brain and behaviour, and the most sensible first steps to take if you believe mould could be part of your child's story. Dr. Jill, welcome to my mighty Quinn.

Dr. Jill Crista (03:50)
Thank you so much. Thank you for the honour and also the the honour of that amazing introduction. thank you very much.

Lucia Silver (03:58)
It's our great pleasure to have you and I'm going to wind back at the very, very, very beginning because our parents are on many different stages in their learning journey and I want to make sure we don't leave anything out while we have the privilege of having you here. So first of all around just understanding mould and why it's missed. For parents who are completely new to this, can you start by explaining what mould illness actually is and why it's so much more than just an allergy or a respiratory issue?

Dr. Jill Crista (04:26)
Yes. Well, I think that we have normalized, especially in the UK, we have normalized damp, you know. it's just damp. And there is nothing no such thing as just damp and health being equivalent and in the same space. So damp can mean the same thing as a water damage building. All it takes is excess humidity. It doesn't necessarily require a big flood, a leak. it can actually just be excess humidity in a building that has

Previously living organic material. That's what Mould's job is on the planet. It's to decompose and break down anything that used to be alive and is now dead. So think about fallen leaves in the autumn time. Mould's job is to go in and start to break that down so that we don't have piles and piles and piles of leaves that we have to, you know, work through every day, year after year piling up. That's its job. So if it's in an indoor environment and it has everything that it

Wants, which is previously living organic material. Think about wood, cardboard, textiles, wallpaper, all kinds of things that we build our homes with. And then we give it water. If we feed and water it, of course it's going to grow. And water means humidity. It doesn't even mean it has to be a big, persistent water problem or leak. And when mould is growing,

We it can make us sick with multiple things than just the spore. So there's the mould spore itself. That's the living part. And then it will off gas these chemicals as it's munching on whatever food it's eating. So if it's cardboard boxes in your basement, it could be munching on that and then it off gasses these chemicals. And I kind of jokingly talk when I talk to kids, I tell them that's mould's farts, you know, because it's just eating and it makes so

Lucia Silver (06:17)
You

Dr. Jill Crista (06:20)
So kids can really understand that. And then there's a whole other group of chemicals that mould will make if there are other competing microbes in the area. And these are called mycotoxins. Not microtoxins, but mycotoxins. And these mycotoxins are made, even though they are really energetically expensive for mould to make, it will start to make it if there are more microbes in the area to defend its territory. And the way it does that.

as I explained to kids, is with silent but deadly farts. These are the ones that are made absolutely on purpose to harm another living thing because it says, wait, wait, wait, wait. I love this environment that I just found in this house. I have all the food I could ever want. I have enough moisture to sort of keep my factory running and keep eating and and digesting and off gassing my mould farts. I don't want to share this environment with you, so I'm going to gas bomb you and get the competition out.

Which that's fine. If that was the only thing that was happening in your house, then it would be like, well, no big deal. You know, you could just clean it up, surface wash it, that kind of thing. But the problem is these toxins make up about 80%. From our research so far, about 80% of the symptoms, but they aren't classical mould allergy symptoms. So the spores are what cause the allergy type symptoms, the mast cell reactions, the you know, itching, runny nose.

Clearing the throat, postnasal drip, maybe even itchy ears, respiratory things like that. That's the spore stuff. But the spores are only accounting for about 10%, 10 to 15% of the total symptom load. So what does that look like in a kid? If it's mostly the toxin piece, that is why in kids, especially and in adults, as we've seen in our research, neurological

is the primary, most frequent symptomatology out of this whole picture. Because we've got the spores, we've got the chemicals of regular spore living, then we've got these mycotoxins. So it's a it's bigger than just an allergy issue.

Lucia Silver (08:29)
Well, we'll come on to breaking all of that down because you've mentioned so much there and it's clearly so much more pernicious than some parents think. It's just what's on their food and that's the end of the story. So there you go. So why do you think mould then, given the gravity of this, is still so overlooked within conventional medicine? I mean, particularly when it comes to children presenting with neurological behaviour and psychiatric symptoms that can't be answered to anywhere else.

Dr. Jill Crista (08:54)
Yeah, it's it comes down to medical ethics. It's actually a beautiful part of medicine that we cannot purposefully poison people to figure out how to get them better and what the poison does to them. So these these mycotoxins are recognized human carcinogens. So we know that some of them like aflatoxin and okrotoxin that can be offgassed by these very common indoor moulds like Aspergillus and Penicillium.

These off-gas mycotoxins that are known human carcinogens. So we cannot set up a study, thankfully, where we say, okay, we're going to have you smell this toxin and we're going to watch what it happens. And then we're going to try to, we're going to break you into two groups. One group we're going to treat with what the animal research tells us gets you better. And the other group we're not going to treat at all, potentially, you know, causing genetic harm and cancer in that.

group. So we can't do that. So we're missing all these randomized control trials that we can do for other types of conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, you know, we can do these different studies. we can't do that with mould because we can't harm people on purpose and especially not children.

Lucia Silver (10:11)
Wow, I mean, that's a very generous answer as well, because I hasten to add, and I'll say it so you don't have to, but our GPs in the UK don't even know that mould has a negative effect. So it's not even that the research isn't there to back it up. The front line isn't aware of what we're discovering, you know, and you have so well testified to. So yes, I...

Dr. Jill Crista (10:32)
Yeah. And that's the

reason is if we don't have studies, the way that medicine is right now, you have the study, the study gets adopted, it takes twenty years for a new concept to get adopted and actually into medical education. So we are just now about to publish research on humans. And you know, there has been some dribbly, you know, three to four different studies. We can say, hey, this is actually human studies. But even if we had a tranche of research drop, you know, like 15 good quality studies and

Dr. Nathan and I are working on the next step is to start to do clinical trials so we can actually get some some good human data and trial data. That's the language that medicine uses and then it can take twenty years for it to show up into medical education.

Lucia Silver (11:16)
appreciate that. And you know, if we waited at the Brain Health Movement for all those trials to happen, nobody would be empowered to take any action. mean, I'm convinced in that after doing the necessary to get mycotoxins out of Quinn's system, he made a rapid recovery. So, you know, if you're looking at enough clinical evidence, and I'm not talking about research evidence, I'm talking about case studies from practitioners who are adopting natural methods.

Dr. Jill Crista (11:22)
That's right.

Mm.

Lucia Silver (11:41)
then

hopefully no harm will come. But again, we'll come on to exactly what we can do to help those who feel that they have been exposed. But let's go back. So what are some of the most common symptoms, Dr. Jill you see in children that would make you think this could be mould

Dr. Jill Crista (11:56)
Mm-hmm. So in kids it works a little bit differently than adults. Adults typically are going to start with the respiratory. So it might be sinusitis, earringing, vision problems. So it's it's all kind of up in the I call it the front door where you are exposed to mould is your nose and you're, you know, that's where you're gonna have most of the symptoms show up first. In kids, because they are master detoxers, it's gonna show up in the skin first.

And in an adult, it doesn't show up in the skin. They're they're almost the exact opposite. So for a child, it's skin first, behaviour, then gut, and then the respiratory, typically. In an adult, it's almost the exact opposite direction. Mm-hmm.

Lucia Silver (12:38)
So in a

child is that when you say on the skin is that eczema is that bumpy white things on the back of the arms is it psoriasis what does it look like?

Dr. Jill Crista (12:46)
It can even just it's rashes of all kinds because what mould does that's unique, mould and lime are like this, they are the master imitators because mould can affect every system in the body and cause almost any symptom, depending on the mould, depending on the mycotoxins, depending on that person's susceptibility, which has to do with genetics and nutrition and all kinds of things. that means the rashes could be anything. This is also why we're missing mould, because there's no

Diagnostic cluster of symptoms. It's basically it's like whatever your Achilles heel is going to be in your body, if you're tend toward breakouts, or if you tend toward aging on the skin, or if you tend toward, you know, a hive-based reaction, whatever their tendency is, worsens, which makes it incredibly difficult. Typically, it's going to be if they're getting exposed to more of the spores. So let's say the mould is the spores are available to the indoor air rather than being trapped.

behind building material, that's going have more of the mast cell and the hive and the histamine type reactions, red, flushing, that kind of thing. It might be after they eat, they get that around the mouth and you think, what did they just eat? Well it's only because they were just primed to have a reaction to whatever the next food coming in. So then you start doing this like whack a mole food sensitivity thing because you're like, okay, they're they broke out and a, you know, their lips got swollen and red because they ate, you know, I don't know.

Eggs. Okay, we gotta knock that out. it happened with strawberries too. we're knocking that out. carrots. you know, and you just start like throwing foods out when here it is, mould behind the story, raising the threshold of reactivity to whatever's gonna come in because the mast cells are yeah, they're just sitting there on all the skin surfaces and the digestive surfaces, like with machine guns saying next thing I see that moves, I'm gonna shoot. No discernment, no whatever, just reaction reaction. However, if it's more the mycotoxin.

Lucia Silver (14:29)
whenever it is.

Yeah.

So

Dr. Jill Crista (14:44)
Yeah, go ahead.

Lucia Silver (14:45)
this is connected, Dr. Jill then to, and I know we will come onto it, but that is an autoimmune response. It's exacerbating the response of the immune system. Is that what's happening?

Dr. Jill Crista (14:56)
It's an immune excessive or a lacking discernment. The way that I see autoimmune is the immune system did that over, over, over, and then it finally went, and it's immune exhaustion. So autoimmune I see as an immune deficiency reaction that we actually have to do a lot of immune building, educating, and priming it or de-priming it from being so reactive. So it's like a hyper-reactive immune response.

But as that goes along, the immune system gets exhausted. And then that can trip that trigger, that last little, you know, that trips it into an autoimmune response. Because the body's like, I don't even know anymore. I don't even know what we're reacting to. Let's just whatever we see the most common of a protein, attack it, even if it's self-tissue. And that's a lack of discernment, that's immune exhaustion. Mm-hmm.

Lucia Silver (15:37)
So we'll react to everything, whatever.

Yes. So

again, just to wind back a little bit, what is it about mould and mycotoxins then that makes them so disruptive to the brain and nervous system and immune system? What's going on there?

Dr. Jill Crista (15:58)
Yeah, so then that's the story of like if it's mostly the spores are are available to the indoor air, let's say they're happy spores, they're not making very many mycotoxins because they don't have a lot of competition. That's going to be the more like allergic, like kind of a classic mould allergy or hay fever kind of kid. That's not the typical story. The typical story is these mould spores are trapped behind building material, under a fridge, under the flooring, behind the drywall.

Somewhere in the attic, you know, trapped behind a tub or something like that. That's the typical place where we get it. And this is why it's such a hidden problem. So then what the child is reacting to is the toxin part. So that's the regular, you know, off-gassed mould farts and also the silent but deadliest, the mycotoxins. Now what we see is immune depletion. So mycotoxins are toxic to the immune system. It makes the immune system really wimpy, slow,

You know, not it just kind of takes it out. That's what these toxins do. And if you think about what the mould is doing, let's think about that one little spore that's like, I found all the food and water that I want in this house. Mm-hmm. I'm so happy. And then another kind of mould moves in and it says, wait a minute, I don't want you in my space. It sends this toxin out ahead of itself and then sends its baby. So it's a way that it encroaches farther. So if you're thinking about that, that's what mould is doing. It's sending out these toxins.

We're not the intended target, but it these biological systems affect us just the same. And so basically what it's doing is it's impairing our defences so that it can establish a new territory. That's the whole reason. So that's what when you think about then, well, why these toxins and why is this affecting the kid's skin and nervous system? Because as we in encounter them, we're smelling them in. We get in through our nose, the way that our

our brain works is it it has this long smell nerve that goes from the back of the brain all the way to the front to smell stuff. And on the way it circles around all of these basic brain stem, like our our original reptilian brain, survival brain kind of thing, because smell is really important for safety. Like if you're in a wildfire or you start to smell it, get out. You know, I mean like it's a really important safety thing. And so it's wound all around all of our our brain that

has to do with a sense of safe safety, you know, wellness, all of those kind of things. The smell nerve is really important there. Unfortunately, those toxins are toxic to that smell nerve and they can soak right in because there are certain kind of morphology. They're lipid soluble meaning fat soluble. And they can go right up that smell nerve and they can get entangled in that area of the brain. So it inflames them because it's toxic.

It starts to then generate mast cells, which are the clean-up crew. And the mast cells like, my gosh, we have a toxin. And so they blow things up. And so it's just this constant like a cluster bomb or wildfire of the all these little mini sparks start to like light new sparks and it creates this nerve inflammation in the brain. And the that's why I say the number one thing is just get out of that exposure. If at

all possible, especially children, especially pregnant mamas, just get that's the first thing is like stop the exposure because it's going to continue to set off all of this reaction in the brain.

Lucia Silver (19:29)
Yeah,

I mean, a lot of our parents to that point think, you know, we'll just do the mold cleanse and it'll be fine. And it isn't because they're still in the environment. And as you say, with the brain, these neurotoxins, or as we talk about the brain on fire or the inflammatory responses going on, the brain is full of fat, which people don't think of, right? So when something is fat soluble, as these mycotoxins are, it loves that area, right? It's a very conducive area for it to be.

Dr. Jill Crista (19:57)
Yep. And it didn't need any carrier protein. You know, a lot of things in the body were were really brilliantly made that we have a lot of like stop and check bar, you know, check marks or stop checks. And this is one of them that because it's fat soluble, it doesn't have to have any like key for the lock or, you know, it doesn't need any kind of passport or anything like that. It just gets to soak in. Straight in. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (20:20)
Just straight in. Carte blanche.

So when our parents also say, and I'd suggest that mould might be an issue or mycotoxins might be an issue, I often hear, well, it can't be because only one of us has had a response. And if it was all of us, sure, but it's not. So I think we need to just speak briefly as well to how...

one child can be completely unaffected in a mouldy environment while another child's living in the same home and seems to be doing incredibly well. So let's just address that first. Yeah.

Dr. Jill Crista (20:54)
Yeah, let's dispel that myth because it

is more the rule than the exception that everyone reacts differently to the same environment because of how complicated and complex these molecules are. And also, whoever is the sickest might be the closest to the problem. So proximity to the issue is very important. So let's say they're the kid with the bed whose head of the bed is on the other side of the parents' bathroom where the mould problem is.

And the parent's head of the bed is on the other side of their room. So they aren't getting as big of a load as the kid whose head of the bed is right at that wall. These are, I should explain, these mycotoxins are nanoparticle size. So the spores can be trapped behind building material with absolutely no musty smell, because mycotoxins have no odour. And the mycotoxins, because they're nanoparticle size, can be coming through the building material into the indoor air with no

you know, with no smell. That's why it gets missed a lot. You don't even need the musty smell. Yeah. So it is far more common to have one person and rather than admonish that person, they need to be heralded for being the canary that's keeping the rest of the family from getting sick.

Lucia Silver (22:12)
Yeah. Thank you for that. That's great clarity. So many parents listening will also recognise that there is a moment when their child may suddenly seem different or more anxious, more explosive, I don't know, more tired, more rigid, more sensitive, right? So can Mould answer to these kind of dramatic changes as well? Because I get told, well, you know, what happened all of sudden? It wouldn't have done if it was in the building all the time.

Dr. Jill Crista (22:14)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we see clinically, and we're trying to prove this in our research, that it can take a few months before the bucket is full. So this this concept of the toxin bucket, which I'm sure you teach about in your course, that the body is born, we're all born with a different size bucket that we can handle these toxins. And some of them are our own metabolic breakdown products. So if you're a high metabolic person.

Lucia Silver (22:50)
minutes.

Dr. Jill Crista (23:02)
That still goes into the bucket until the metabolism can clean out those metabolic by-products. So we also have to remember: like the more active kid is also burning through a lot of metabolic processes, you know, chemicals. They're breaking things down, they're building things up, they're high metabolism. So we have this bucket that's gonna be maybe you were born with a tablespoon and someone else is born with a whole gallon-sized bucket of ability to manage these toxins.

Which has to do with, you know, can you detoxify other things in our environment? Again, your own metabolism, what's your nutritional status? That's going to determine how quickly you empty the bucket. Certain nutrients, too, which is important for kids, certain nutrients will stop the mycotoxins from coming into the cell. So if they're higher in that, and we know this from animal research, if they're higher in DHA, which is a certain kind of fish oil.

they won't have as much of the absorption into their nose and into their brain because it's that's the one guy who's sitting there like a what do you call them a doorman or whatever just sitting there and saying, nope, sorry, there's no room in this membrane for you. All of us, all the fats are accounted for. You can't come in. So there's all these individual things that determine the bucket. And then the body, the way we're designed, we can manage things until you hit the top of the bucket.

And then the spill over. So it seems like an instant issue. But actually, when I talk with parents and we go back in time a little bit, they say, you know what? Now that I think about it, and this is a really important thing, I hope you parents are listening. The first thing I think that our kid did was get really sleepy and tired and slow. It's almost like the mycotoxins just like dulled things and they are almost like a they're a

really well behaved or even on the on the verge of like comatose at school like they're not learning they're not absorbing things because their brain just went on like slow power mode and as a family that can be really nice you can kind of miss it because you think wow you know that kid hasn't acted up in yeah the quiet this is our good kid and then the bucket fills up and then all of a sudden boom neuroinflammation

Lucia Silver (25:13)
things and go quiet.

Dr. Jill Crista (25:22)
The body can't clear it anymore. It's gotta go somewhere. So that because they're fat soluble, they can accumulate in all our fatty tissues, which is bone marrow, brain, the linings of all of our our our visceral organs. So like the gut lining gets hit really hard. And now you have a gut brain fire, and you have a kid who's, you know, brain on fire, went from the slow, easy kid to the, you know,

jumping off the walls, kid, and really hard to handle. That's classic mould. And we see that it takes three to six months for that, that's the average of a daily exposure for that bucket to fill up and click over.

Lucia Silver (26:05)
And it's true across the board with everything we're looking at in terms of stresses. Dr. Jill, just to reiterate, mould is amongst the most serious. But there never was just one thing in one moment that caused anything for any of our children. And I think you and I will both be listening constantly to parents who initially might go, it all just happened in year six or grade five or and then when you start unpacking it, were there was a little tick or there was.

Dr. Jill Crista (26:13)
Mm.

Yes.

Lucia Silver (26:31)
they

never had a good poo. It was always soft or it was, there's always a little tell-tale sign as you say, but what you're, what we're talking about is the perfect storm. And we're talking about this whole toxic load that simply reaches its elasticity limit. It just goes snap. It didn't just arrive that morning, but with that snap, I think we can also speak to the kinds of neurological and behavioural symptoms that mould is triggering, right? When it's got to its most

Dr. Jill Crista (26:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (27:01)
extreme expression, what kinds of neurological and behavioural symptoms might we actually be seeing in kids at the worst?

Dr. Jill Crista (27:09)
Yeah, neuropsych of all kinds. I would say anxiousness is the most common that we would see in a kid. And that can look like they just don't feel settled, safe, they need a lot of reassurance. Double check, double check with parents, triple check, you know, this kind of like there's just anxiousness. And and of course if they're anxious, that's where you you don't have digestive processes at work. The sleep is difficult, you know, the body a lot of

restless sleep and insomnia, waking a lot through the night because the body is literally brilliantly saying, We're not safe here. Get up and get out. You know, and so the kid can't sleep. And then they're they're just like exhausted all day. And when they get out of the mold environment, they are very sleepy. So they might be falling asleep at school the minute they get out of their environment. Now if school is the problem and home isn't, it's the exact opposite. They are the kid who's bouncing off the walls at school and they come home and they just are like

napping, calm, they go to bed early, no no arguments, no nothing. So it depends on where the exposure is. a lot of visual symptoms, so neurological visual problems like convergence disorder, which is where they're reading across a page and the eyes move at different times. So they don't actually understand or it doesn't compute what the word was. So this can affect the learning. Double vision, you know, vision gets really tired.

so they can't read for a long time. They're fine for like five minutes and then it's just like check out. and then headaches we will see a lot with kids that gets reported a lot. There was a s a great study in Finland of a school that was mouldy, and they they did actually have the, you know, evidence of the mould and which ones they were. And the most common neurological symptoms in kids was headache. And right after that was behavioural. Was like, you know, the anxiousness, the the acting out, and and for some

Like I wanna continue to say it's not always neuro inflammation looks different in every kid. It's not always hyper. It can also be hypo or that they fall asleep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or not fall asleep, but you know, they tr check out.

Lucia Silver (29:16)
Yes, and all of them, they're

pathetic. I mean, we speak all the time within this to if the body cannot prioritize safety, which in this case, you there's been a like a cell danger response. This is going right back to fight or flight. My environment is not safe. The body is actually what we need to emphasize here is it's actually responding exactly as it should.

There is a pathogen there. It's doing what it's supposed to do. But over a chronic period of time, the system is just winding down and it can no longer prioritize development of which eye tracking, eye convergence, concentration, sitting still, development and learning in school is all apart and it starts breaking down. So from what I'm hearing from you, we're only actually interviewing Dr.

Bryce Applebaum last week and his is all about what's happening with eyes and vision and why that function is getting disturbed. But once again, it doesn't really matter from where it's getting disturbed. The point is the minute the system is not able to follow its brilliant, you know, as nature intended trajectory for development, then we will see everything including ADHD symptoms, rage, sensory issues, aggression.

Dr. Jill Crista (30:34)
Yeah.

Lucia Silver (30:35)
autistic traits ticks OCD, right? Because it's all part of the body, either trying to find its way back to some sort of nervous regulation, or it's trying to fight the pathogens, and eventually it's exhausted. And so what wouldn't break down, quite frankly, what system would not be affected is probably the easier way to see it, isn't it?

Dr. Jill Crista (30:58)
That's brilliant. I love that. Like what wouldn't break in this with this demand? Yeah. That's an that's actually an easier question to answer than what would because it you know, then you're only down to maybe like two or three things. Whereas with when we say what could happen with mould, it's everything. You know, the the pie chart of frequency of symptoms, there are so there's so many different symptoms and they're almost equal. So we've got like forty six symptoms.

all taking up an equal chunk of the pie, no wonder we're not finding this, you know? So I always say like with mould and with lime, if you're doing everything that makes sense and you're still not getting anywhere, please, please, please look for mould. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (31:40)
Yeah, I

mean, I felt embarrassed with the introduction because the more research I did, the more I listened to you and the more I've been listening to parents, the list just got longer and longer and longer. But I thought, I need to read this list because if parents are listening, one thing may resonate, but another may not. But they're all part of this picture. So it is important to understand just how universally impacting this really is. I want to close focus a little bit because we do a lot of work in raising awareness and education within PANS and PANDAS.

once again in the UK, not so well known at all. And I know you still have a way to go in the States as well, but I suppose because I found the experts in America, I'm always thinking you guys are so, so far ahead. But we know that mould can be a significant trigger for children with pans and pandas very specifically. Would you mind just talking to us a little bit about how mould fits into that picture?

Dr. Jill Crista (32:35)
Sure. so we were talking about how the mycotoxins can go right through the the nose nerve, the smell nerve, and up into the brain. Once it gets up into the brain, the way that I kind of see it is the the mycotoxins, like the little minions in Despicable Me, they they will move if there's a lot of them, they try to move to get uncomforta you know, and they keep moving up the nose into the brain. So the more you smell of these mycotoxins, the more you will absorb.

And the more they will put press up into the brain to kind of not feel so squished is the idea. So we have we can get a huge build up of mycotoxins in the brain tissue. And we talked about then the body says, wow, the immune system goes, wait a minute, this is a toxin, yikes, yikes, that's not supposed to be there. The resident immune cells of the brain, which are called microglia, the way that they work is that they're n in a normal

healthy brain, we have them swinging around like monkeys trying to swing around. I I talk about this in my pandas book. That they're just swinging around the branches of your brain and they're going and they're just picking up the little bits of garbage and eating it and they're perfectly happy and they have their arms. Nobody's screeching, no one's throwing poo, no one's nothing, they're just happy monkeys. And that's these immune cells in the brain. Well when you get mycotoxins up there, they're highly inflammatory and they the monkeys of the brain, these little microglia

These immune cells do not like them so much so that the minute they see them, they will try to absorb around them. So they lose their arms and legs, which makes the monkeys really mad. They start screeching. The other monkeys that are supposed to be going around other branches of your brain come and look at what's going on and they get upset. And then they all start flinging poo, which is mast cells and histamine and all of that. So

That ends up being like a focal area of inflammation because they can agitate each other. And if you think about this, if you've ever been at the zoo with your kids, you can see like with the month one monkey starts screeching and they're all, you know, get upset, like, and they don't even know what they're upset about. They're not the one touching the toxin, but they're just getting upset anyway. So that's why I think monkeys is a great way to think about these guys in the brain. And then all of the mast cells show up and then they make any monkeys that are around lose their arms.

So while they weren't, maybe they weren't even upset and screeching, now that there's a mast cell there, they're gonna lose their arms. They don't like that. And so they start screeching and flinging poo too. So we've got this like growing inflammatory thing that's happening in a focal area of the body. And then what we get is where we talked about the immune, the trigger that's tripped, that the body says, my gosh, this is a messy bush of angry monkeys.

I'm not even sure what we're upset about because it was maybe even only one toxin in the very beginning, in that very centre spot. And all the rest of it is just a reaction to that one toxin. And the body says, Well, let's go look around the outside of the bush and see what might be making all these monkeys mad. And it will find something that if it sees it a lot, it'll say, Well, that must be the protein that's wrong. Well, unfortunately, in pandas and pans, that protein is their own brain tissue.

And so the immune system starts making antibodies to their own brain tissue because they didn't go all the way to the core to that one centre monkey that started all of it. They're looking on the outside. And so this is called biomimicry. It's basically the body is like, well, all these immune cells are seem to be upset about this same kind of protein. So it must be this. Because we've seen this in the throat. Like we've seen this as strap, or we've seen this as you know, one of the herpes viruses, or we've seen this as the flu before.

And it can look a lot like its own brain tissue and it just starts a cross reaction.

Lucia Silver (36:24)
So this is the misdirected autoimmune response that we speak to with PANS, which is typically the basal ganglia that is affected. So with other children or with symptoms of autism and other things that we're seeing, is there a different response happening within the brain or is it ultimately still an autoimmune response of attacking the brain?

Dr. Jill Crista (36:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

We don't know with autism. Autism is really kind of a, it's an umbrella diagnosis of a a bunch of causes. So, you know, there's a big push to stop using the term and start identifying actually what the cause is because once you put a tag on it, you know, once you name it, you've limited it. So, it's autism. Okay, well, case closed. No, it's autism. Why? What are all the factors? And often it is mould, heavy metals.

Lucia Silver (36:56)
Yes.

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jill Crista (37:16)
They're t you know, they came in terribly as terrible detoxers. They had in utero exposure to something, they've got food allergies. I mean, there's this host of things. So I think with autism, it just mould trips the trigger on the neuro inflammatory part of it. So that if there is going to be a heavy metal toxicity or food allergy, it's going to express as a neurological issue, or it's going to affect the neuro even more. And that's what we know even from normal kids who get exposed to mould. Neuro is their number one.

Lucia Silver (37:24)
Yes.

Dr. Jill Crista (37:46)
you know, registered complaint because the skin stuff gets missed. A lot of times you're like, kids have skin stuff, the, you know, slap some stuff on it, suppress it, it's fine, blah. But it's the neurostuff that's harder to slap cream on and move on, you know. So with with pandas and pans, it's this, I see it as a continuum of mould increases the inflammation in the brain and the nervous system. So there's this creeping increase in neuroinflammation until finally some trigger is tripped.

Lucia Silver (37:59)
Yep.

Dr. Jill Crista (38:14)
Where the body trips into autoimmunity. And that's why I wrote a whole book on pandas and pans, because that is a very different situation than brain on fire. It's brain on fire and attacking itself. We've got to do different things for that. Yeah, and actually some of the things that once once we get into pandas and pans, once that trigger is tripped, the, as you said, the basal ganglia is the area that gets affected.

Lucia Silver (38:28)
Yes, yes, it's a compounded issue if you like, yes.

Dr. Jill Crista (38:44)
and they end up with damaged receptors to dopamine. So the kids are swimming in too much dopamine, and also damaged receptors that manage acetylcholine, which is a regulatory neurotransmitter. It keeps all of our autonomic systems working, like you know, how how many tears you make in your eyes and managing your blood pressure and how much your gut moves when you eat, and all of these kind of automatic things we don't think about. So both these are very excitatory.

in the brain. And if the receptors are broken, then there's nobody picking it up and taking it out of the space. And so the kids are swimming in tons of dopamine and glutamate and all these neurotransmitters that are very excitatory. And that really matters that we understand that mechanism because as in my pandas book I have a list of herbs that will actually increase dopamine and glutamate and make that worse. And a lot of them are what we would consider quote good for the brain, like turmeric, oswelia,

Passion flour, lemon balm, those are actually going to increase the dopamine and could potentially be making the attack problem worse. So I think it's really important that we understand mechanism.

Lucia Silver (39:52)
Yes, 100%.

So we've talked a little bit and we'll have more information in our guide and so forth about buildings and all of that sort of stuff. But I know that our parents will be thinking about mould in food and even Quinn goes to me, the raspberries are mouldy. You've told me, mum, stay away from them. You know, what do we maybe just need to understand about food and even some tips on storage methods and parts of the food chain that maybe parents should be aware

Dr. Jill Crista (40:21)
Sure. I mean, in most Western culture, we're not getting heavily mycotoxin contaminated food. This is actually tested for. can you get it in food? Yes. I don't, I think I can count on one hand the number of patients where it was a food borne thing that really we could call it mould related illness from food. So we we've been, you know, we are what I call mould obligate.

eaters. You know, we've always eaten a little bit of mouldy cheese and mouldy raspberries and you know, like all through time. Are you kidding? We didn't have refrigeration. So the there's a lot that we would eat a little bit, you know, of probably at the end of a season of something, you know, like there's there's a mould that grows and the apples on top. and it grows a mycotoxin called patulin. So it's like, yes, have we eaten maybe patulin in our lifetime? Yes, but it's only like seasonally.

When that apple is in season, the tail end of the season, maybe you're gonna get more of that. So it's not every day, day after day, day after day. the only exception there, I think, would be coffee, because there is some pretty mouldy coffee that people are drinking, and that's an everyday thing, and many, many cups a day for some people. And in the cases where my patients were made sick from mould ingested, so things they were eating and drinking, usually it was the coffee that was the problem. Other than that.

The majority of people who come down with what we would call mould related illness, it's from their environment. So that's a big, big picture we need to get across because a lot of the labs, you know, the the insurance companies and the real real estate moguls have done a very good job paying very well paid lawyers to say that no, no, no, no, no, this couldn't be from their house, they're eating it. And in a Western culture, no, we don't, not the case. No.

Lucia Silver (41:51)
Yes.

Yeah, and that's not

not the case.

Dr. Jill Crista (42:15)
We do eat some and our systems are built for that. You know, a healthy microbiome can degrade mycotoxins that are unbound and floating around in there. There are there is some pretty good research actually from animals. They will add certain probiotics to their feed if they know that it's going to be a little bit of mouldy feed, like they've had to scrape the mould off, but they're going to feed the bottom part anyway. They'll add kind of a, you know, a cure by adding these probiotics because they know they'll help break them down in the gut of the animal.

Lucia Silver (42:36)
Yeah.

And like we say, with a base level of acceptable stresses, our bodies are amazing. And when they are functioning as they should and they come out of cell danger response and the developmental boxes are ticked, we can handle Daily Mould, we can handle these little things. What we're talking about is really a bit like with the chemicals that we've got 88,000 chemicals that we simply didn't have.

five years ago, it's just too much in a compounded sense. And if you're in a building or at a school where you are at the interface with mould every day in mycotoxin, it's just too much in that environment. And the body really does struggle. And it's one of the things we say must be dealt with upfront because you can be doing all of these wonderful protocols. But if that neurological stressor is in place,

then we do need to give the body assistance because it is too much, especially for a developing child system. With that, again, just to come back, we touched on it lightly earlier, Dr. Jill, but for those parents that are going to get a little bit nerdy, and this will be the nerdiest we get, I promise, in this episode, but I just want to speak to the role of genetics and detoxification pathways because, number one, it speaks a little bit more deeply to why some children within an environment may be affected and others not, but it also speaks to

Dr. Jill Crista (43:41)
Mm-hmm.

Lucia Silver (44:05)
what we're going to come on to, which is that it isn't as simple as simply throwing a detox protocol at the body, because sometimes it can go very wrong with all sorts of detox methods when we don't prepare the body, prepare the environment, mostly move out of the environment. Could we just have a little insight from you on the role of genetics and detox pathways in determining whether a child can process these moulds, toxins, effects?

Dr. Jill Crista (44:30)
Mm-hmm.

Well, the good news to hear is that most of the toxins want to leave through the kidneys. So we don't have to worry as much if we're if we understand that. So that I'm on a whole tear right now on that is that they all enter the body the same way. They can go through our respiratory passages, through our nose, sinuses, through our skin. Yes, you can ingest them in food. So, you know, that is to be mindful in the very early stages.

However, they don't all leave the same way. So each mycotoxin has a different way that the body would prefer to get rid of it. The top most toxic, most potent ones, tricothosenes, the body prefers to shove it to the gut. So it'll actually, even if you're breathing it in, where then it goes to your bloodstream, the body in its wisdom will say, ooh, this is a really potent toxin. What's the fastest way to get this particular type of toxin broken down?

Because they're not all the same. We have we call them mycotoxins, but they're very, very different. The body will shunt it to the gut, move it through the gut wall so the probiotics can get in there and start to break them down. So the body knows, gut is the primary way for this toxin. Whereas with okrotoxin, it's a kidney detoxifier. Many, many of them actually. The body would prefer to get rid of it through the kidneys. So your liver detoxification part.

We can, even if there's compromise with that, we can mitigate that limitation by enhancing the other ways that the body wants to get rid of them. And the kidneys get forgotten all the time. I mean, this is this is one of one of my soapboxy things. It's like, don't forget the kidneys. but we do know that some of them, like aflatoxin, the body will preferentially try to get rid of it through the liver. And there are certain liver pathways that each mycotoxin will go through if the kidneys aren't keeping up and the gut isn't keeping up.

it'll go through these different pathways and every mycotoxin has a different primary pathway and then secondary and tertiary. so one of those pathways is glutathione. So if somebody has, if they are a bad methylator, so they might have MTHFR or they have a genetic polymorphism, so a mutation in their glutathione detoxification, the they can have a harder time with aflatoxin.

Whereas other mycotoxins use the glucuronidation pathway, and this is where we get really nerdy. Glucuronidation is not only hard to say, it's a very busy one. It's where we process our hormones. Many, many, many of the medications that we process, even antifungal drugs. So if somebody's like, you know, we'll get get you on antifungals and let's go, they could be taxing that pathway, making it harder for someone to detoxify. So we want to be enhancing that glucuronidation.

Because that is where the ones that want to leave in the kidney, they might go through the glucuronidation first to be made water soluble so the kidneys can get rid of them. So it just depends on the mycotoxin. And I love that's why I love testing, because we can be so much more precise. We know a person may have some of those mutations, and the the key ones are glutathione, glucuronidation, and sulfation, which those are the the so you can look for MTHFR.

You can look for the glutathione, the GST, the sulfation, it might be the suwax or the CBS mutation. So there's these different kinds of genetic mutations. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get better for mould. That just means that we need to know that and then either push the toxins through a different way, like through the kidneys, or support that pathway, or know what the secondary pathway is and maybe enhance that pathway. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (48:19)
or perhaps

begin the process by bolstering all the organs before you even begin the detox, which is something that we did with Quinn, you know, really, really bolster the kidneys, the lymph the liver, everything, and then begin, because if it's, like we say, the body knows what it's doing, know, woe, but I just, when we keep interfering and telling it what to do, if it's strong and it's healed and it's found its homeostasis, hopefully it will find its way out. And I think sometimes we can, in some areas, over test and then in other areas like,

Dr. Jill Crista (48:43)
Yeah, definitely.

Lucia Silver (48:48)
I mean, we did make a little decision with Quinn. just assumed that his body needed the support without testing because I couldn't afford to do a lot of testing. So we kind of assumed it needed, you know, bolstering before we began. And so many of us do have MTHFR actually. It's not a rarity. those detox pathways are very often challenged. So the testing is, I mean, what you alluded to there is something I didn't know before we began, which is a mycotoxin test. So your

what you're speaking to Dr. Jill is that there are many, many, different types of micro, you don't want to be trying to do them all. So the mycotoxin test, which we did do, identified which were the areas that we needed to address. And so while we're looking now at some of the practical implementation, your advice for parents, they're listening and wondering whether there could be mould affecting their child and where they should begin, is that where they should begin aside from moving out of a building if they absolutely know it has got.

that's first step. Is second step then doing the test for which mycotoxins are in the system or is there something else you'd suggest they begin with?

Dr. Jill Crista (49:56)
That's a great question. So if we know that if we know the mould situation in the building, we can infer because we know which mycotoxins those moulds make. So we can make an inference about what they're exposed to. And then you don't have to be, you know, chasing after the after the body testing. It's easier to find it in a building than it is in a body, because the body will shove away and store away some of these toxins and not maybe not even be able to

If it's been really long standing and they're very suppressed, that test could be completely normal in the body when they're actually a very sick person. So we have to understand limitations of the testing. So if you know it's in your building and you know what you've had it tested for the building, you can maximize the results of that test and infer what the body is dealing with. There's some really great research about, you know, the the prevalence of mycotoxins being found in

a home if there's more than one mould detected. And that's very high. So again, it's competitive. So if there are two there, they're probably have been duking it out with mycotoxins the entire time they've been in that building. So make that inference and then you can go from there. I've been working on getting individualized symptom lists for each mycotoxin. So you can also kind of tell by if there's you can look at my I have whole symptom lists.

that kind of like point a little more to this toxin than that toxin as being the chief thing. So if it's more itching and flushing and bloating after eating and more like a candida look, that's probably gliotoxin, MPA, then you can treat that and get that out of the body. And a lot of times that gets the engine moving and clears out some of the pathways, then the body can do the rest of it naturally. Or if it's going to be more like the

brain stuff is big, you know, so a lot of neurotype symptoms. I should have said earringing too. That that's a big one on the neuro. then that might be more of a chetoglobusin. You can clear that one out of the body and then go looking for, you know, so if you know what's in your building, you can make inferences.

Lucia Silver (52:04)
And

conversely, if you don't, Dr. Jill, like it feels like you're doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And I guess maybe that is the way, how do you start with the kid? If you have no clue, if you have no clue, the building or do you start with testing your kitty or do you do something in the building? What, what, what or schools build, I guess.

Dr. Jill Crista (52:12)
That is 'cause it's money. Yeah.

Yes.

Yep.

right, right, right. It is very helpful if we have the more information the better because this is a very complex condition. One building can have a mix of one over 15 million different options in one mouldy or damp building. So I love to do testing. with kids you can do urine testing. It's very simple, no needle pokes needed, anything like that. And they tend to be better detoxifiers than the grown-ups.

So they tend to, you know, their bucket isn't as full and they're still spilling instead of storing. And we can find it almost better in the kids. So if you have a whole family, and you know, often like the typical picture is dad doesn't think he's affected at all, mom is starting to lose it. We've got one super sick reactive kid and another kid who's like about to fall off the the wagon, you know, like that's this like a typical picture. And oftentimes then we can find it in that.

kid who's just about to tip better than the one who's very reactive and better than the mom who's spent. And we find it in dad, but nobody thinks to test him because he perceives that he's fine. But really what it is is typically with men, the first thing that we see is a little bit of neuro that can edge toward irritability, and then loss of muscle mass and loss of testosterone because these are

Lucia Silver (53:30)
But I have.

Dr. Jill Crista (53:51)
there's a mould mycotoxin that's estrogenic. So they might get a little, you know, loss of muscle mass, a little more of a dad bod look, a little more irritable, a little grumpy, maybe some sleep problems, maybe some mild headache, but it's all can be attributed to just like, you know, work. Work strict.

Lucia Silver (54:09)
I mean, I

heard it's extraordinary, isn't it? And look how each body is responding differently, which is so confusing really when we're so symptom led with everything that we do instead of root cause led. But there was one story of a household in the States and the GP was on the podcast and saying that the woman had been diagnosed with fully fledged dementia. She just was not operating at all.

the husband who in this case was the GP had almost lost his eyesight and their dog died. It was one of the most dramatic things I'd ever heard. And they had moved into a new building. were two years in and they found the waters in between the linings of the building and started testing. And after about 18 months, the wife showed no signs of dementia. Can you imagine having been diagnosed with dementia and she was like, do you?

Dr. Jill Crista (55:00)
I see it all the time. I see it all the time. Yep.

Lucia Silver (55:04)
I mean, she was cleaned of her diagnosis. 80 % recovery of his eyesight, not fully yet. And of course, the poor dog. so I just think you cannot underestimate both the breadth and depth of the damage that we're talking about here.

Dr. Jill Crista (55:20)
Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, not to frighten everybody because we're here to offer solutions, but the saddest case is where a family was the doctor was trying to navigate the inspection because we're not good at that. We're good at bodies. We shouldn't be doing your building inspection. You need a good inspector. And the doctor proclaimed their house mould free after never having stepped into the building at all because of a ermie test.

And took the score of a two and said, nope, couldn't be couldn't be mould. And the child ended up getting lymphoma because they stayed in the house two more years. Now, was that a better treatment? Because then we found mould, we got them out of mould, and the lymphoma was not actually lymphoma, it was a mould reaction. And so did they need treatment for lymphoma? Yes, but the kid is doing perfectly fine now. And had it not been identified, that would have been

you know, a very, very sad case. But I hear about pets dying all the time. Like this is a very common story. These like the trichothosenes, the toxic black mould, they're very, very potent. And so I want to just give parents a little note of warning that if you know you are in mould or even damp and the primary symptom of your child is vomiting and diarrhoea, like on a very regular basis.

That means that is about a one-fifth to one-tenth of a lethal dose of that toxin. So that's why it's important to test, you know, ideally we would test everybody, but to know the levels and if tricothosenes are on there, you need to get out of that building stat and then figure it out. And a lot of times just getting out.

Clears up the brain fog enough that you can get smart enough to take the next step. Because that's a very difficult part of it, is the discernment of what to do. It's so overwhelming. You're trying to do it with an inflamed brain, a brain that's running on low power mode, you know, it makes it very difficult to determine what the next safe step is for your family. And that's Jedi, mould's Jedi mind trick. It makes you stay. And so if that is nausea and vomiting, that is a absolutely get out of the house.

Lucia Silver (57:26)
Yeah, I'll you at one point again.

Dr. Jill Crista (57:32)
Now find another, you know, with stay with friends, do whatever you need to do, and then figure it out from the safe place.

Lucia Silver (57:39)
Well, thank you for that warning. It's so important. And if we're looking, I have about six questions and I'm going to actually let you lead the way with this, but there is the right way about, and I know you can't break it all down on a podcast and we're going to try and get as much of this information into some guides and direct them to your wonderful books. But I do want to just, again, express the importance of sequence and getting the body ready and being ready to take on the

It's a serious issue, detoxification, and it isn't as simple as taking a raft of supplements and that's that. There's a lot to understand first, there's a lot to understand about your individual body, there's a lot of preparation. We talk about the readiness is all. So you can't in a nutshell, but as best you can, Dr. Jill, we see some kids reacting very badly to detox. you don't wanna add another issue to where there is already a big issue going on.

So just in headline, what would be the best next steps to begin detox?

Dr. Jill Crista (58:48)
Yeah, so I in my mould book I have what's called peel the orange. And the reason I came up with an orange is as I started to think about my five kind of steps or methods, the way that I kind of organize this, I was like, okay, what's a good graphic for this? It's not really a pyramid or whatever. And I realize it's an orange because the first two need to be done nearly a hundred percent. So the five steps, first one is avoidance. So avoidance of the mould, either

You are getting away from the exposure or the exposure is getting corrected in your building space. Second is fundamentals. And that's so, you know, that's where you and I are very aligned, is that you've got to get the body back to its natural state as much as possible. So that's I I kind of you can break that into good, clean living. And then the next one is protecting the body, repairing the tissues that got damaged, and then fighting back the mould because it does want to move in.

It does colonize our respiratory passages. It does colonize our skin, our gut lining, even bladder turns out. So we want to make sure that we are resetting the microbiomes of all of your surfaces everywhere that you're encountering the outside environment. So I say it's avoidance, fundamentals, protect, repair, and fight, as kind of the order. And fight meaning like, you know, fight for your own dominion over your own body, basically resetting those biomes.

so the the avoidance is key. And I know that there are some situations where people can't do that. I would say if you are in that situation of like, okay, we're trying to figure it out, we're like a month away from getting it this all worked out or getting out of our apartment or you know, moving or remediation can't get us for a month. Load your kid with DHA, that fish oil. It is the most protective thing that can it protects their brain, it protects their nervous system, it keeps them from being really sensitive to salicylates, which is

Lucia Silver (1:00:39)
So memory.

Dr. Jill Crista (1:00:43)
one of the conditions that can happen with mould. It's just a wonderful nourisher. It does have histamine and fish is a high histamine food. So if DHA is causing any kind of like histaminic reaction, you can always use pro-resolving mediators or resolvins. That's the most anti-inflammatory part of the fish oil. It doesn't do as good a job as being the block at the membrane, but it will keep the neuroinflammation down. And then fundamentals, like I said, good clean live in. Get your bed on, get to bed on time, get up.

early in the morning and meet the sun, you know, be be a human, not an owl. eating good food, I take away fungal foods and foods that may lead to more fungal overgrowth and foods that are higher in histamine just temporarily. So we really focus on like almost like a keto paleo diet in the beginning. And then when we get to protect and repair, we haven't even gotten to detect talks yet.

Because we're still now nourishing the body with the things that we know mould is going to knock out. It's gonna spend a lot of these nutrients, a lot of our antioxidants, a lot of our nutrients like molybdenum, selenium, these trace minerals, that when we're trying to, you know, clean out these mycotoxins, you can get really depleted in those. So it's this whole repletion thing. There's a whole prep step that starts before we even think about.

enhancing detoxification and before we even think about a binder, which is not what you hear in the zeitgeist. You hear if mould add binder. Well in kids you have to be so so so so careful because binders bind to nutrients. So as I just explained if you have a nutrient depletion from ploughing through all these nutrients trying to detox and you put a kid on a binder is going to cause more nutrient depletion.

Then you're going to start a secondary issue. You can get more dental caries, so cavities, growth issues, enhanced detox complications. So you've you've now pulled out these minerals that could be actually necessary for the detoxification. So I think of it like you have to do the prepping, clearing, you know, and then binders, but I do not use clay in kids. I know it's that's one of my also things. I I learned this from the animal world.

clay can bind a lot of the nutrients in that kids need, a lot of minerals. It can be a source of good minerals, but it's used day after day after day in the animal world. They would never do that because they end up with animals with nutritional deficiencies. So when I'm using binders, I'm using binders that do a lot of different things. So I love aloe as a binder. That's probably my favourite one. It's a good adsorbent binder just like charcoal.

But it's a binder that gives back. So it helps you absorb your nutrients across the intestinal wall. It also helps to soothe the gut. And it's anti-histamine. It's one of the best histamine stabilizers. So it's doing all this and it's an immune modulator. So it's like five different tasks that it's doing while you're, you know, bind binding and getting rid of the gut. But before that, I do a lot of kidney clearing, kidney, kidney, kidney.

I have a little rule of thumb that's bioflavonoids before binders, because the bioflavonoids are helping the kidneys do the detoxification. So you can take the pressure off binding and the perfect probiotic and blah, all that kind of stuff. And then the fight layer is just doing antifungals. And in kids, that doesn't mean it has to be pharmaceutical. The majority of the antifungals that I use with kids is herbal and they work smashingly well, actually.

Lucia Silver (1:04:27)
These

are the five tools that are very much laid out in your book, I have to say very clearly, right? So this is something that parents can follow up on. I wonder how much of this, I mean, of all the topics I have to say that we've covered in the podcast and on our educational platforms, this is probably the most complex. I don't want to back away from saying that. And there may well be a need for specialist support. There's an awful lot to do.

Dr. Jill Crista (1:04:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:04:54)
But there is also quite a lot that can go wrong in the best sense of the word, not catastrophically wrong because nothing that you're suggesting as far as protocols are concerned are heavy duty drugs. They're all very natural supplements and herbals and so forth. But it is complicated. It is very unique to the environment and unique to the child and even so unique to the adult who respond differently to the children. So I think it's fair to say that you may need some support going through this, but

Dr. Jill Crista (1:05:18)
Yes.

Lucia Silver (1:05:22)
but this will begin your understanding. And I want to step into having learned so much from you today, Dr. Jill, into kind of healing and recovery because it is possible. And when you work with children who have been severely affected by mould, I'd like you to really share now what kind of recovery is possible. Yeah, let's start with some, maybe even a case study of what you found and what you went through and the extraordinary outcomes.

Dr. Jill Crista (1:05:51)
Yeah, sure. I mean, I have a a number of PANS situations where mould was the thing and not strep at all. We never found any evidence of strep as the thing that triggered it. and it, you know, it's mould as the foundation. And when we really were able to address it in the environment, in I would say, you know, probably half and half of the cases when it's something as severe as pans or dementia,

It almost seems like the kids just never feel well in the house that first made them sick, even if everything is testing perfectly clear. So in some cases that has required a move to a different I feel like it's like they move to a house with a different microbiome. You know, it's it's almost like they were never gonna feel well in that microbiome that made them sick in the first place. But what it's really beautiful to watch because the kids do respond very well and

faster than their grown-ups, parents. and when we do address the detoxification and we can get all the way to the fight, that's the part where people get a little squeamish about using like, you know, essential oils, sniffers, like there's these, you know, sniff sticks that I use for for getting the the mould out of the nose. You can do those safely with kids. They have limbic rebalancing, they get the body out of cell danger, you know, and some parents are like, I don't know, do we really need to do the nose? That just seems

Please do the nose, please do their whole systematic, you know, the fight layer is important. The more we can really embrace that, that we're these antifungals have been used for eons. It's things like oregano and clove. You know, it's not anything that we're really, you know, poisoning the body. The research shows that they do help to rebalance the microbiome in a favourable way. So they're not nuking the gut of the kid. you're not nuking their brain by

having them sniff an essential oil, you know, inhaler, when we embrace that fight layer, the recovery is so much faster. And kids can just completely walk away from this. Like it's just a it is something in their history book. Yep. I will say it's the the few that tip into the autoimmune, about half of those families in my experience, even after really good remediation, they their kid was

Lucia Silver (1:07:59)
don't know.

Dr. Jill Crista (1:08:11)
so much what better served getting out of that home that first made them sick. And then kids where their mould exposure was when they were in utero, they're going to be the ones that are a little more, and this is backed up in research too, their body was developed, their immune system was primed to select mast cells over all other types of immune cells. So they're going to be the more allergic kid, but that with a little bit of herbal management of things like that we know that stabilize those, like nettles,

you know, very simple kind of herbal things that you can do every day to stabilize. And then they're they're a less reactive kid and they can live a more normal life. Yeah.

Lucia Silver (1:08:51)
What an amazing

thing to witness happening. within that, Dr. Jill I mean, it's such a privilege and I can't imagine how grateful these families are to you. For those parents listening now who may be feeling any one of or all of, frightened, guilty, overwhelmed, because they now suspect that mold may well be part of their child's story, what words of wisdom, solace, empowerment have you for them?

Dr. Jill Crista (1:09:19)
Yeah, well the guilt is real. I remember feeling that when we had mould in our house and I was a mould expert and I missed it. So if you if you're listening and you're thinking, I'm such a dummy, you know, my made I made my kids sick. I did the same thing and I this is what I do all day. Like this is what mould does to your brain. It tells you, shh, shh, shh, shush, everything's fine. There's no tiger. It's fine. And that's the thing with mould. There's nothing visual. There's no smell. There's no thing that makes sense.

And so if you're feeling guilt about that, please take that off your shoulders because that's not helping any of this process. It's a squandering of energy that you just don't need to take time on. second bit of advice would be just get outside. You know, if you're trying to figure things out, the outdoors is your best remedy for so, so many reasons for the sunlight and the you know, vitamin D, and also just like the the connection we have with sun.

Whether you're a sun worshiper or not, you know, that connection with just like, okay, that's the higher order, getting sense of nature because when mould moves inside, it doesn't act naturally. Neither do we. So when you can get outside, you can kind of get that breath of fresh air, get clear. It doesn't have to be, you know, a two-hour hike in the woods. It's like just regular little doses of outdoors.

And I think that that's a really important part of keeping your head on straight because as you stay time in that building, you will help mould. It will rewire your brain and and make you make the wrong decisions. That's just what it does. Delay, delay, delay, delay. And if you're frightened, just know that this is this is a completely preventable and treatable problem.

I am very much a nerdy scientist, but I'm also I embrace the woo big time. energy is is definitely the foundation under all of this. And mould can you can get on a coherence with its frequency. And that can make it very hard to both recognize it and also very hard to eradicate it.

So I put together a guided visualization that is completely free. It's on my website. It's called the Clarity Pep Talk. I jokingly call it the Breakup with mould visualization. And it's best if you listen to it with both ears because it's made to literally move through the corpus callosum, the to move you from left brain to right brain. And yeah, I engaged the assistants of the cicadas in my backwoods, recorded them and they helped out. So it's 11 minutes.

I think that this, you know, I'm trying to have this be a gift to help you get off the coherence of mould so you can start to make those decisions that you've gotta make. So that's my that's out there for anybody who's equally woo.

Lucia Silver (1:12:13)
Dr. Jill, thank you so much. This conversation has been incredibly enlightening. And I know it's going to bring clarity, relief and validation actually to many parents who may have been gaslit over this issue or who have been searching for answers for a very long time in siloed medical systems. Because if there's one thing I hope parents do take away today, it's that if your child has suddenly changed or...

There are complex symptoms, multiple symptoms showing and they're struggling with these and nobody can fully explain. Or if you feel as though you're continually fighting a fire that you can't find, there may be something deeper driving those symptoms and mould may well be one or the missing piece. But I also hope that parents leaving this conversation understand that they do not need to panic or blame themselves, as Dr. Jill has said, or even attempt to fix everything overnight. I think that's part of the overwhelm we all feel. want to

like magic it away immediately. The first step is recognizing the possibility, then gathering the clues and beginning in the right order. So Dr. Jill has also very generously agreed to provide all of the information that you know we bring into our free guide. So we're going to create a practical companion resource for this episode. We called it Could It Be Mould? A parent's checklist and first steps guide.

and it'll help you identify some of the possible symptoms, environmental clues and exposure patterns that may warrant further investigation, as well as the most sensible and calm, gentle first steps to take. What not to rush into if you believe mould could be affecting your child. And you'll find the guide along with Dr. Jill's bestselling book, Break the Mould, her mould questionnaire and courses, educational resources and social channels linked in the show notes.

And if you found this episode helpful today, please share it with another parent or practitioner or teacher or even your GP or another family member who may need to hear it. We're all needing to learn. Please also like, subscribe, follow and leave a review, whatever it is that reaches more families. If it helps us, it's going to help you all eventually. And if this episode resonated with you, you may also want to explore our free resources.

So thank you very, very much, Dr. Jill, for joining us. It's been incredible, and I have learned so much today.

Dr. Jill Crista (1:14:32)
It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Lucia Silver (1:14:35)
Until next time, lots of love and hugs from all of us at the Brain Health Movement.