A number of people I know have mold issues. They claim or they believe that mold has infiltrated their lungs. Some doctors tell them they're crazy. Some doctors tell them that they're not crazy about that idea. Is mold toxicity a real thing? Can it be treated? Maybe we do an entire episode about this another time, but is it a real thing?

And what is the kind of primary treatment for mold toxicity? It is a real thing. And mold is a substance that can have multiple different effects on the body. Let me give you an example. There's a fungus called aspergillus. And there's two ways that aspergillus can affect the human body.

One is if it just sets up shop in your lungs and it doesn't invade, you could become allergic to it. And the symptoms are allergic. Actually, there's a condition called allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. So it's kind of like an autoimmune situation. Exactly. And so you have symptoms of asthma. You have symptoms of inability to breathe.

And the primary treatment, ironically, there is steroids because you need to reduce the inflammation, but also antifungals to get rid of the thing that's inciting in the first place. That's as opposed to invasive aspergillosis. That's where the fungus comes in and starts to invade and create a cavitary lesion, usually with a fungus ball sitting in the middle of it.

Oh, yeah, it's pretty bad. Sometimes it's so bad that you actually have to do surgery to cut out that thing because you can't cure it. The way that this often happens is mold and fungus are in the air all the time. So here's this understanding of there's germ theory and there is terrain theory.

And today, and I almost hate to even get into it, but people think it's one or the other. And I can tell you as a physician, it's both. There are certain diseases, it doesn't matter what your terrain is, it's going to, like Neisseria meningitidis, if you get that, it's going to cause a bad meningitis, no matter how healthy you are.

There was just, I remember reading about a young Japanese star, I think, or Taiwanese star just recently here that died of influenza, 48 years old, no medical problems. So it's possible no matter how good your terrain is, you could get a bad bug, a bad germ, and it could kill you.

On the other hand, there are certain bugs that are just sitting out there and they will go in and your immune system will just kick it out like it's nothing. Why? Because your terrain is good. So I can talk about different types of infections that could do that. So that's where we are with molds.

So typically, you're breathing in all sorts of molds and fungus spores all the time. But if your immune system is good, it'll just kick it out and won't have a chance to survive. Where you have a problem is if you have a situation where your immune system is compromised.

To give you an example of that, practically, there are some biological medications that people get when they have rheumatoid arthritis. If we get to that point where you have rheumatitis so bad that we have to put you on a biologic, that means there's an antibody there that's suppressing the immune system so that you don't have the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis.

That's actually suppressing your immune system. In those patients, we'll always check them for tuberculosis because certain people walking in the population will have an inactivated tuberculosis. They're infected, but their immune system has walled it off. Then we put them on a biologic, and the tuberculosis pops up. So all of that to say that, yes, it is possible if you have mold in your house versus if you don't have mold in your house.

That just increases the burden of mold that you're inhaling. And to the degree that it's going to match against your immune system, that could depend on whether or not it jumps in and actually causes a problem. So we're coming up--this is the time of year where we're coming up to the Super Bowl.

So it's the question about terrain theory versus germ theory. And the question is, whoever wins the Super Bowl, did they win the Super Bowl or did the other team lose the Super Bowl? And that's--who knows? So this is where this thing--it's not or, it's and. And really what determines whether or not you get infected is how good is your immune system and how virulent is the burden of a pathogen that's going in.

The reason I asked, is it a real thing, is that people that I know who believe they have a mold infection or they did do seem to have symptoms that last a long time. And there doesn't seem to be any general agreement about what specific treatment to use for this unless maybe they need surgery or something.

So do you give people antifungals? Are there--is there anything over the counter that can help? Will the sauna protocols and steam protocols we were talking about earlier help? I would imagine a lot of warm, moist air is exactly what fungus loves. Yes, it does. If someone came to me with mold, with a mold complaint or thinking they had mold, there are a number of tests that you can do to see whether or not there's antibodies to those things and you can see whether or not that may or may not be there.

It's not definitive. But if somebody actually, truly has mold growing in their lungs, we should be able to see that on a CAT scan. We should be able to identify it. We should be able to go and biopsy it. We should be able to go and collect it. And if that's exactly what grows out in the culture after we take a biopsy or a culture, then we can tailor antifungals for that particular thing.

In the sense, though, that someone may be having symptoms of some sort of infection or something and there's nothing on the CAT scan, it's harder to really isolate exactly which one it would be and what would be the right treatment. Although, there are some syndromes known as RADS or reactive airways disease, where you can have an exposure to something that's so egregious that even though you don't get exposed to that thing again, it can still cause persistent difficulty with breathing.

It's very similar, by the way, to asthma. So for instance, let's say someone's working in a vat and there's a chemical that's spilled and they get an incredible amount of inhalation of that chemical. It's well-known that these people can go on and have these types of problems, even though their lungs may image correctly and they may never be exposed to that chemical again.