252: The Hidden Illness Hiding in Your Walls: Mold, Misdiagnosis & the Path Back - Ally D'Amico NP

You've done the work. You cleaned up your diet, fixed your sleep, addressed your metabolic health — and something is still wrong. Brain fog you can't explain. Fatigue that won't move. Weight creeping up for no apparent reason. Personality changes your family notices before you do.

Nurse practitioner Ally D'Amico spent 14 years watching patients spiral through specialists, collect diagnoses like fibromyalgia and chronic depression, and never actually get better — until she stumbled onto the thing nobody in conventional medicine was looking for. One in four people carry a genetic predisposition that prevents them from clearing a common environmental toxin. Fifty percent of homes contain it. And the insurance system doesn't even have a billing code for it.

If you've ruled everything else out, or if you're still not all the way back — this conversation is worth your time.

BIG IDEA

Mold toxicity masquerades as fibromyalgia, chronic depression, brain fog, and metabolic dysfunction — and one in four people are genetically unable to clear it on their own.

Ally's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ally-d%E2%80%99amico-anp-bc-4b596015/
Website: https://www.moldco.com/
MoldCo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/moldco/
IG: @themoldcompany
X: @themoldcompany

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Transcript

0:56

welcome everybody. It is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia. And we are joined today by a guest who is... You know what, Phil, I don't want to say any more 'cause I have a suspicion there's a very personal element to this with you. So I'm just gonna step back and say take it away, Phil. Yeah, thanks. I am excited to have our guest on, Ali D'Amico. I was introduced to her a while back. She is a, I'm gonna let her go into all of her background, but she's a nurse practitioner by training, and has made a few stops along the way that certainly overlap with a lot of what we talk about around metabolic health. And now she's gotten into an area that I know we've had a few previous guests on related to some of the what I call non-food toxins and environmental issues that can start having negative impacts on our health. So we'll get into all of that. But as always, Ali, we'd love for you to kinda introduce yourself to the audience and talk about maybe, like so many of our guests your journey that got you a little bit on the edges or out of the traditional medical system. What are some of the things that kinda led you down that pathway? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. So you know, as Dr. Ovadia mentioned, I am a nurse practitioner. I started in nursing back in 2004, did all my training at Mass General Hospital on a medical telemetry unit. Decided that I wanted to move into the preventative medicine space. Went back to school at Boston College, got my nurse practitioner degree, and went into primary care. I figured that's really how I could help the most people and put my training to use. And I was... I did 14 years in a little city just north of Boston in Lowell, Massachusetts, and we treated a ton of diabetes, chronic disease management, hypertension, cardiac disease, lots of urgent care. I- it's just a really true primary care setting. And I just felt like I needed to do more. We were always having patients come in and- We had an outrageous diabetes population, and it was just this med following the different algorithms. People never honestly really got better. I got pretty good at stalling diabetes progression. I got pretty good at maybe lowering some A1Cs, but honestly, people just continued to get sicker, and that's when I really fell into the metabolic health picture, and I found Virta Health, which is where I came to Molko from. And they're really focused on using food as medicine, and they're really focused on diabetes reversal, weight loss reversal using food. And that's kind of where I went and more eyes were opened. I learned so much there, and I was still in primary care doing that part-time on the side. And then my doors really became... My eyes really became open to environmental illness and biotoxin illness honestly during COVID. So here you have COVID. Everyone's locked in their houses, and and I took care of tons of patients that would come to me in the primary care setting, and I honestly would have no idea what was wrong with them. They'd come in. They'd list 30 symptoms. I'd known these patients for 10 years. I know they're not faking. I know I, I did my best not to gaslight them and tell them it was in their head. I knew it wasn't. But I would run all the tests. I'd run the blood work. I'd scan them, and I would say, I don't know. Go see a neurologist or go see a rheumatologist. I'm really not sure what's wrong with you." And right during COVID, my sister moved in with me actually. She was in a moldy house and she moved in with myself and my family, and she came with this huge bo- box of drops and meds and all of that. And I said, "What are you doing? I need to clear out a cabinet for you. What are you doing?" She's,"Oh, I have mold toxicity." And I said, "Mold toxicity? What is that?" And she was telling me all about it, and I was like, "Okay, that's interesting." And then over time I did see her start to improve a little bit, and I mean, I saw it with my own eyes, and I started doing the research and discovered environmental health and CIRS and Molko and I was just kind of a serendipitous perfect. They came onto the scene- I was looking into it and I joined up with Ariana, our CEO and the rest is history. And now I get to help people suffering with mold toxicity, and I'm loving it, and it works. You left out an important bit there. Yeah, please. MoldCo. Yes. MoldCo is- Yes, so MolCo- A, a- Yes, MolCo is sorry. Yes, the most important part. So MolCo is a company that was founded by Ariana Thatcher, and it is a telehealth service that we're almost open in all 50 states, and we treat mold toxicity on the telehealth platform using the Shoemaker protocol. And yeah, just trying to get access to as many people as we can at a fraction of the cost, and just getting the word out there and getting people treated with, for mold toxicity. So how big a problem is that? Yeah, so we know that, so we can break it down a little bit, 50% of homes have mold in them. Whether you see it, whether you don't, 50% of mold, have holes have mold in them. And then we think about 85% of commercial buildings have mold in them. That's kind of the generalized statistics. Does everyone get sick from where they live or work? No, not necessarily. There's about a 24% of the population, 24% of people carry a genetic predisposition that doesn't really allow them to rid themselves of the mold that they breathe in, of the mycotoxins that they breathe in more so than other people. So we're really talking about 24% of the population. We suspect about 25 million people at this time are probably suffering with mold toxicity. In the US? In the US. Okay. And we so we're in a we're in a situation where people are sick for lots of reasons, right? I think now we're finally starting to get some widespread acknowledgement that our population is very sick. And, we have all of these reasons that they might be sick, right? There are many people that talk about the food that we eat, and there are other people who talk about, the water and the air and, mold and all of these other various things. How- How should people start to think about,"Okay, I'm sick," right? And this might be a good contrast between, maybe what you were seeing at Virta where very focused on metabolic disease and the food that we eat as the reason that you're sick versus, some of these other environmental things like mold. What are maybe some of the indicators that people should be on the lookout for that, yes, I'm sick, but it's not, it may not be w- m- the more typical reasons that I'm sick, right? What might indicate that mold is something they should be looking at? Yeah. A couple different things. We ask people onset of symptoms. When did you first notice that difficulty sleeping? When did you first notice that brain fog coming on? When did you first start to notice that chronic fatigue? No matter how much sleep you got, you're just still feeling tired. And we s- have them think back. Had you just moved into a new place? Had you just had a water event in your house, whether it be a leak or a flood or anything? Did you change locations at work? We just have them really try to identify when their symptoms started and where they were, and the great thing is with Molco, with mold toxicity, there's testing. There's testing available. We can rule in, rule out, and give patients a clear path forward to what we're working with. It's not guesswork that we do. It's not, "Oh, you have these symptoms. Okay, maybe it's this." We, it's over 30 years of peer reviewed research that we have out there that can tell people what they're dealing with. Are there any telltale symptoms? Oh, no. Or d- or does it present as it could be any number of things? Yeah. There's a very wide variety of symptoms that it causes, which is why it's, the overlap is so huge with other conditions that could be going on because what we're really looking at is when patients breathe in mycotoxins, and for 24% of the pop- population, their body is unable to rid them appropriately- It essentially causes their immune system to constantly react to those mycotoxins in their system. So when you have a hyperactive, overactive immune system all the time, it just really causes a dysregulation in their body. So when you have a dysregulated immune system, it really can fire off to multiple different systems within your body. So some patients are more neurological with their symptoms. They're having the brain fog, the chronic fatigue, difficulty word-finding. Really high-functioning people at their job, and they go into work, and they're, "Oh, all of a sudden I can't remember stuff. I'm stuttering. I am having word-finding issues." And then other people, it's really focused on the gut, gut health. Leaky gut, constipation, diarrhea, mixture of the both. All of a sudden people are developing food sensitivities that they never used to have before. I would say the most the earliest and the most common signs are those neurological and the gut symptoms from what we see. Without... I, I don't want to give away the punchline. I don't know the punchline. I'm just guessing here. If somebody is suffering from mold toxicity, it gets diagnosed, you begin treating it, and they don't move, they don't go to... They don't leave the place that's causing the problems. Is there any hope? Or is that just part of the protocol? You gotta be where there isn't mold. So we, we talk to people about their environment as we're treating them. So yes, ultimate goal is to remove yourself from what's causing you problems. So that is the ultimate goal, but that's a lot to ask of people. Some people who are in- Yeah... their house, and they're saying,"Okay, now I have this $50,000 remediation," or, "Okay, I can't just pick up my family and go buy a new house, ali, that's not how it works," which I can perfectly understand. So we help coach them through that. We always do like to start treatment even when people are in environment, start ridding them- themselves of the mycotoxins out of their body. But we use the bathtub analogy, okay? So you're filling a bathtub. Those are the mycotoxins coming in, and you put on the drain. We're pulling the mycotoxins out, but as long as you're still having mycotoxins- pouring in, you're still filling some of the bathtub. So we wanna shut off the faucet as soon as we can, but in the meantime, we keep the drain on. So we like to start treating patients start using a binder, getting those mycotoxins out of them and then start working with them on that. A binder is? Yes, thank you. What- So a binder is a medication that we use. We actually, use an off-label use of colesevelam, which is a cholesterol- Okay ... medication. And we use it, and it pulls the pulls the mycotoxins, attracts the mycotoxins into the gut and excretes them through the stool. Kind of sucks them out of your, binds with them and sucks- ... them out of the system, thus the name binder. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, as we're working with patients on that, we're kind of talking to them about their environment. Can you make a safe space in your house? I don't even care if you put up plastic. Just find where the problem wa- is. Get yourself away from it. Air purifiers, open windows, get ventilation in. Get all the dust up that's in your room. Just really trying to make as safe a spot as they can possible while they're working on the problem. Let's go back a step, all right?'Cause testing diagnosing this and we've had a few guests on that are in the mold mold space, we'll call it at this point, and there is some, I guess, debate, some controversy within the community as to how do you test for it, what is the most accurate way to diagnose whether this might be an issue for someone. So what's the approach that Moldco takes regarding the testing? Yeah, so for the testing, we really use the biomarkers reflective of the immune system, okay, because you can have Jane Doe over here, and you can have Jane Susie Q over here, right? If Jane Doe isn't one of those 24% of people that really become sick, if we're doing her mycotoxin tests and we're seeing if there's mold in her, hers will be positive, but she doesn't have any symptoms because her immune system is handling those mycotoxins appropriately. Now you have Suzy Q over here, and she is one of those 24%, and she also has mycotoxins in her, but she's very sick. So what's the difference between those two? Their immune system. The way their immune system is reacting to the mycotoxins, the way their immune system is handling them. So the biomarkers we're using are really reflective of your immune system. So we're looking at, TGF-beta1 levels, MMP-9 levels, MSH levels, C4a, V- VEGF, a lot of your inflammatory markers and your immune system markers that are going to be abnormal when your immune system's in overdrive from a biotoxin illness. So yeah, we're... So those are the really, the l- labs that we focus on, the immune system labs, and of course the dust testing to test the environment as opposed to some of the other methods. And I think everything you mentioned you were talking about blood testing. Yes. Okay. Very good. And okay you for whatever reason you're suspicious, you might have mold illness. You go, you do the testing. We talked about, y- you wanna try and figure out where it is in your environment, and can you separate yourself from that one way or the other? What are kind of the foundations now of the treatment for it? How do we help people recover from this ultimately? Yeah, absolutely. So you go to moldco.com. So you go to Moldco, so what we do is we are all we follow the Shoemaker protocol. So Dr. McMahon, who is our medical director who practiced in this space, has practiced in this space for 16 years. He's treated over 2,000 patients and he's directly trained by Dr. Shoemaker. Okay, you've said that several times now. I have no idea what the Shoemaker protocol is. Okay, yes. Ritchie Shoemaker is kind of the, he is, not kind of, he is the founding father of CIRS, of mold toxicity. He has been studying this and publishing o- on this for over over 30 years. He has 45 plus peer reviewed published articles. So he has developed a treatment- Okay ... for mold toxicity. All right. So it's called the Shoemaker Protocol, named after the founder, Dr. Shoemaker. All right. And we've worked with him to his process is 12 steps. His process is 12 steps. It's lengthy, and it's costly, and we've worked with him to kinda- Break that down and at Molco we treat people in three steps. We do a three-step Shoemaker protocol. We detox, so we, as we talked about before, we bind the mycotoxins out. Step two is a clear phase. We use a nasal spray. We find that 80% of people who suffer with mold toxicity also harbor a colonization of bacteria in their sinuses and it's also triggering their immune system, so we need to clear that biofilm as phase two. So phase one and two are really focused on relaxing the immune system. And then we move on to phase three, which we use a polypeptide treatment, a peptide treatment. It's called VIP, and that, that's our restore phase, and that helps restore and re-regulate the immune system. That kinda answers partially answers one of the questions that, that came up for me was if you're one of that 24%, can you strengthen your immune system such that you're a- at least less susceptible, if not immune, to this kind of environmental toxicity in the future? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you probably... I mean, genetics are genetics, so unfortunately we can't change those. So when people first come to us, I mean, they can't even tolerate going to church or going to a relative's house for Thanksgiving or going to some place that's moldy. They'll walk into these places and, I mean, they flare up. They, they start getting that fatigue, brain fog right away i- in their... They avoid places. I mean, it's a huge mental health impact that this, that mold toxicity has on people as well. So what we find is once we re-regulate their immune system and get things back on track, people are able to go to church, to go to short trips, a- and be exposed and not flare up immediately like they were. That being said, we still... People, and they can get the genetic testing with us as well, and when they find out that they're someone who carries the genetic predisposition that makes them unable to clear these toxins as well- It's not a death sentence. It's just something that you know. And we say, "Okay, when you move to a house, make sure that you're not moving into a moldy environment." It's just something to be aware of. If you're gonna travel, and if you're gonna go to the Caribbean and stay in a moldy hotel, you're bringing your binders with you, and you're taking... E- even if you're done with treatment, you're gonna be taking the binders in while you're on vacation because you're gonna bind to those mycotoxins and not let them build up in your system. So it's more are they immune to it? Can we make them immune to it? No. But we can give them the knowledge and let them know what they need to do moving forward. And how much do so we mentioned the genetics, but how much do other, health issues come into play in thinking about someone who might be, metabolically unhealthy and they have diabetes and, some of the other associated conditions. Is that going to then make them more prone to this? Is that gonna make, having this worse? And, what do you see from a treatment standpoint, if we're just treating the mold, but we're not, addressing their underlying metabolic problems will that impact their results ultimately? Yeah, I mean, so the... We do see the mold toxicity in people who are sick with it really impacts the metabolic sys- sy- system. We see a lot of hormonal changes. We see a lot of weight gain. We see... I mean, I was talking to someone this morning, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, my A1C is going up for no reason. I haven't done anything different. I've gained 30 pounds. What's going on with me?" So from that standpoint we do see a lot of people who might be suffering with mold toxicity have these emerging metabolic things happening to them that they're just having a harder time fight off with their usual, diet. As far as people who come to us with metabolic disarray it it's hard to say what came first. Are you someone who was predisposed to this metabolic syndrome and now you got mold toxicity and now everything's worse? Or were you someone who got mold toxicity and then all these metabolic disarrays came up and now you're worse? So it's hard to say what comes first the chicken or the egg. But I think, unfortunately, this genetic predisposition it does not it does not judge. We have marathon runners. We have elite athletes. We have... it really runs the gamut of the patients we see who are in wonderful metabolic health and they can still get sick. And I guess, we didn't really clarify, so how important is the genetics? In other words having that genetic variant makes you more likely to get this, to be suffering sort of the, ... end effects of from the mold exposure. But how many of the sick people, I guess, that you end up seeing don't have the genetic predisposition? Oh, there's a good question. Yeah, that's a great question. So we... I don't have the numbers on that right now. I can tell if patients might not have the genetic predisposition, because they're the people who go through phase one of our treatment. We detox them, and they're like, "Oh, I'm... I feel like a million bucks. I l- you cured me. Thank you very much," and they go. People who don't carry the genetic predisposition get better really fast, and sometimes even just getting them out of their environment is enough to make them feel a lot better. Excuse me. All right. One of the questions that I've hesitated to ask anybody, and you'll understand why once I ask the question. I've got a friend whose house ended up with... She had They had a water event. Leak in the kitchen or, I don't know, bathroom, something. It went on for a long time. They didn't know about it, and eventually discovered they had this mold problem and got to play the whole game with the insurance company to get- get it all taken care of. Long, nasty, ugly process. Nobody wants to go through that, even if they don't get sick. But but he got sick too, only it didn't present as an obvious physical illness like you're talking about, brain fog or I don't know, all the other things that you talked about. It was behavior change. And to this day, none of us know- whether we can connect the behavior change we saw in him to the mold, but they seem to happen at the same time. So my question is, by the way, this was not good behavior change. So the question is, can it present that way as well? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, without a doubt. I, and I do have people come on, and they're gonna start treatment, and they come on with their significant others or their kids or their parents and a lot of times that is a symptom. They're just not themselves anymore."I just want my partner back. I just want my parent back." Yeah it can absolutely be a symptom. It sounds like this mold toxicis- You say this all day long, don't you? Mold toxicity masquerades as a bunch of other different things. A bunch of other different things. A bunch of other different things. And it's and it's hard, but when you have these symptoms, and you can really relate it to a water event, an environment, a situation like that, it's worth looking at. It's worth looking at. There's simple tests. Molko really has done a great job at cutting down the cost of these tests, 'cause that's the other problem. You wanna get evaluated for this, until Molko and you read and you see the Shoemaker protocol is what works, and you go and you try to find a Shoemaker provider, right? They're not out there. There's 100 of them in the whole country, and they have six-month wait lists. And then you go, and you see someone, and then just to get the testing, it's $4,000. And then y- and then you're starting this whole other trajectory. So that's what's wonderful now. We, it's affordable. We offer, quote-unquote,"cheap testing". Anything costs money is money, but cheap testing. You can have a simple, straightforward answer and a path forward, whether it's rule in, rule out, move on. So that's what's really exciting about it too 'cause it i- it is. It's vague. It overlaps with a lot of different things. We see tons of misdiagnosis out there. People are diagnosed with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, just chronic depression. A- and it's not necessarily that. Chronic depression. Yep. Wow. Yeah, and then, people are probably thinking why doesn't my insurance cover this?" This is an illness, right? Any other illness, I go and the testing gets covered, and the treatment gets covered. Let's talk about how the traditional medical system, views this all and, why your insurance isn't going to pay for this. Yeah. So y- I think it's the science is there. We have over 30 years of published data there, so definitely the science is there. We have peer-reviewed studies, validated biomarkers, reproducible treatment options. I think we're catching up. Now the WHO, NIH, the Mayo Clinic, they've all acknowledged the links between mold and exposure. It's just the skepticism is lagging a little bit a- and i- it's a lag 'cause the medicine just hasn't caught up. So I think we're getting there. Unfortunately, at this time, yeah, insurance won't cover it because there's no ICD-10 code for mold toxicity. There is an ICD-10 code for get bit by a turtle, but there's no- ICD-10 code for mold toxicity. So it's just, I think it's just lagging out there a little bit. I think it is coming. But it's just something we didn't learn about. I heard, I think the, there's a couple medical schools out there that now are teaching environmental illness classes and CIRS classes, and I really hope it is because I was... I mean, I just sit with it for a while once I dove into all the research and looked at it'cause I was like, "I've been failing my patients for the last 14 years," 'cause I, here I am saying, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with you," and it was all right there. The science is there. Everything's right there. It's funny how when it becomes personal, all of a sudden we begin to notice things that-... that- ... we just didn't notice. It wasn't that they weren't there. It wasn't that they're new. It's that they weren't salient. Yeah. Suddenly they're they matter and then we notice them. Yeah. Yeah, and I think- There's- from a practitioner standpoint, what I've noticed is when you have a paradigm shift you then become open, more open to considering where else might I have been wrong or what else might I have missed, right? And, you went through this journey where you had your first, we'll call it awakening, around metabolic health, right? And then, you've subsequently had this other awakening now around mold, and it's something I've seen a lot. I've seen it in myself, and I've seen it in a lot of the practitioners around me. Now again, I have a bias towards, the metabolic health space. But, what I then find is a lot of the metabolic health practitioners, they're like, considering paradigms and open to paradigms that they never would have considered before, they kinda had that major first shift. And again, it probably speaks to, it's just, once you realize there was a major sort of gap in your understanding eh, then we are looking for where else, what else did I miss? 100%. You are so right in that. When my eyes got opened to the whole metabolic health space and there's other ways to do this, and not only other ways, but I dare to say better ways to do this. And it just, it really did open up this space for me as well. You're right. You go to work you're... I don't wanna s- my blinders are never on as a practitioner. Your blinders are never on. You're laying out your differential diagnosises every day and you're saying,"What could this be?" And, "How do we fix it?" But when you have those things like food and nutrition for diabetes and weight loss, I mean, we won't have to get into, to the metabolic space and but we know just eating less and exercising more isn't always the answer for that. And that's what we always thought, i- in recognizing obesity as a disease and everything that comes with that. And you're right. Now my world was open to environmental health and people who used to see diagnosises come in, you're like, "Oh, they have fibromyalgia." They have this pain, this essentially unexplained pain. They've had all the workup and but no one really knows what's wrong with them, and they're gonna call it fibromyalgia. Okay, is that a real diagnosis? Yes, it is. Isn't a nice... That has an ICD-10 code. But then, it, it really could be linked to this environmental illness, which it is fascinating, and I love it. So would you... I'm thinking about these... I have this two imaginary classes of people in my head. Imaginary class number one has done all the things that we talk about on this show to restore themselves to metabolic health. They've dealt with their insulin sensitivity. They've dealt with their sleep, and their sun, and their exercise problems, and they've done all the right things, and they feel better, but they've still got this nagging problem. And we find out because then they go in and they go to Mold Co. By the way, folks, this really is not intended to be a Mold Co commercial, but- ... but they do the work. They go into Mold Co- Co, and you guys do the work, the workup and find out, oh, you've got this mold toxicity problem, and get them helped. And then voila, they suddenly feel better. So my question is there this second class of people who start at Mold Co and they do all the stuff that, that the tests indicate, and they get a little better but really the problem has to do with they're not taking care of all the metabolic stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yes, because we don't really treat metabolic conditions, so people can have two things at the same time. So people can have mold toxicity, and they can have a metabolic syndrome. And what we were talking about before, maybe they were not metabolically healthy and then they got mold toxicity, and now here they are, and they're sick. And yes, you're absolutely right. So people who are metabolically healthy, they're taking care of themselves, they're watching their labs, they're watching their A1C, they're watching their cholesterol, they're doing everything right, so to speak, and then they get sick, and they get mold toxicity. They go to Mold Co. They get treated. They get better. Yes. Then there's that subset of people who are... I hate calling people unhealthy. They're not unhealthy. They're maybe metabolically unhealthy, and they get mold toxicity, and yes, they come to us, we treat them, they get better, but their A1C is still eight. Like I, I- Yeah ... I don't treat their A1C. That's still work they have to do. So yeah, they... And they might say, "Okay, yeah, maybe I'm 50% better. Maybe I'm 60% better, but I still have this chronic fatigue. You haven't helped that. I still have this-" This these sleep issues, these exercise issues that, that you haven't helped. And that's very much the cause. If they're metabolically unhealthy, we can't fix that. And what we do in that instance is we redo lab work. We look at their immune system, and we can say look, your immune system is looking a lot better. Your biomarkers are looking a lot better, so now, maybe we should look into your metabolic health and start working on that." So the- We don't work on that. Go to your primary care. So the markers for the, the- Go to Virta probably, not your primary care physician. Yeah, go to Virta. So the markers for the, this mold toxicity are distinct from anything else? The combination of them are. So you could have a lot of these biomarkers are under this CIRS umbrella, okay? C-I-R-S, chronic inflammation response syndrome. Okay, and you're looking at this big umbrella, and a lot of them are very closely linked. You have your mold toxicity or biotoxin illness patients. You have your chronic Lyme patients. You have your long COVID patients. You have a lot of those other illnesses that cause CIRS. Okay, so CIRS is the umbrella term. So there are some overlap with the biomarkers with those conditions. But when you have those biomarkers, you have a known exposure. You have the environmental tests that are positive. We kind of put the big picture together between symptoms, biomarkers, environmental testing to, to really know that we're dealing with the right thing. Are there any kind of open free market tests that can be done w- to your environment? You... i've got a spa right there, and I gotta stick a little, I gotta put a... In fact, I have my, I've got my test strips right here. I gotta drop a test strip in it every now and then and just check the chemicals on it and make sure that it's where it needs to be. Are there any kind of tests like that you can do for your own living or working environment, or is that literally just one of those the only way to know is if it's in your body? Yeah, no, there's definitely dust t- we call them dust testing, okay? So it, we sample dust- From an environment and send it in, check that for mycotox- for mold. So we use dust testing. They have things on Amazon. They have little Petri dish testing. They have other testing that some companies do called air spore trap testing, where they test the air, they run it through a machine, they test the amount of mold coming in. We, through the research, we do find that the dust testing is the most accurate. So there's a couple different ones out there. One's called an ERMI, E-R-M-I, and that tests for the 36 most common strains of, or toxic strains of molds. And then we have, the one we use at MoldCo for now is a HERTSMI2 H-E-R-T-S-M-I. Don't ask me what it stands for, please, 'cause I don't know. HERTSMI2. HERTSMI2. What the... It's always fun when I'm using my voice dictation on, and I'm like, "HERTSMI2 score," and then it- ... it spells out hurts me too. Sure. And I'm like, "Oh, no, they're spelling that wrong." So the HERTSMI2 score and that tests for the five most toxic forms of mold. So we do find the the dust testing to be most accurate in a, in an environment. That's fine. Maybe before we wrap up one of the other things I'd like to talk about, right? One of the other things that MoldCo is doing differently, and actually this overlaps with Virta as well, right? So it's a different care delivery model, right? Like you said, you didn't develop the protocol. Dr. Schumacher had this, has been doing it for 30 years, right? But the innovation here is how we get that care to people, telemedicine nationwide, or soon to be nationwide, right? Talk about, as a practitioner, your experience around that. What do you find is different? What works good? What maybe doesn't work good compared to when you were a nurse practitioner in your local, family practice office? Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, patients want an appointment, right? You might call for a routine appointment at a doctor's office, and they're gonna say, "We'll see you in three months," or, "We'll see you in six months." The six-month wait list for functional health per- practitioners is at that right now, six months. But here, within one to two weeks, you're getting your initial visit, and patients can be seen when they're needed to be seen. And then once they're a patient, it, it's- It's messaging, so patients can get a response, they can get a response from their practitioner within an hour, and it's 24/7 concierge medical care. They can message and they can get a response. Are they getting a response at 3:00 AM? No.

But they can message at 3: 42:29

00 AM and first thing the next morning they're getting a response. So it's just we can really hand-hold people through the treatment. We can answer questions, we can really be available to them to help them, which is something just in, in traditional care settings you just, you can't offer. So that's really special. We deliver medications straight to patients' doorsteps, so they're able to order our medication or our treatment, and then they get it and they can have it there. It's just really special to be able to help your patients that closely. A downside of the way we do things the way we do, honestly I'll let you know. So far I just find the model and the telehealth access is really special and it's really unique and and I really do love it. That doesn't sound like a downside. I've struggled to find any downsides with it- Yeah ... myself as well. Yeah. And from my perspective, now five plus years into a nationwide telemedicine practice, it's better for the patient, it's better for the practitioner, and I don't know why the majority of care, isn't being delivered this way. Yeah, there are those few exceptions that you need, you need physical contact, right- ... with the patient. But it turns out that those are actually few and far between from my perspective. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I know. I wish I could listen to patients' lungs through the Zoom, but unfortunately I can't. But aside from that, yes, absolutely. There are devices you can send to your patients that they can put on their chest, and it will record their lung and their heart sounds and then, it gets- Oh ... transmitted to you Oh, that's amazing. I'll look into that... it is feasible. Yeah. Yeah. But awesome. All right. Let's tell people where they can find out more if they suspect that this might be an issue that they're dealing with. Where do they go? Yeah. So if you suspect this might be an issue or you have more questions, molco.com. We have a wonderful team there ready to help and get everyone feeling better. I looked on the I spent a little bit of time just looking at the website, and I was really impressed with... it made a lot of sense to me, the what, the how long, the how much. So I am definitely going to send my friend there, and we'll see what happens. Yeah, absolutely do. Yeah, we try to be as fully transparent as we can. The patients know what they're getting and know what to expect, for sure. Folks, this is kind of the, this is the future of person-to-person medicine the way you're hearing about it here. So if you're one of those people who's done all the things you think you need to do to get better, and you're still feeling crappy, hey, maybe it's mold toxicity. You've now heard from the the... What is your title, Ally? I forgot. Oh, director of clinical operations. I'm, The- ... one of the nurse practitioner providers, yeah ... the director of clinical operations herself- ... at MoldCo, so when you contact them, tell them,"Oh, I know Ally." All right. I'll make sure the contact information is in the show notes. As always this has been good. It's been really, Man, I'm not used to thinking about these external environmental and external factors. I'm always thinking about things over which I feel like I have more control, but the air is not one of those things I feel like I have a lot of control over. That's true. All right. For Dr. Philip Ovadia, this has been Stay Off My Operating Table. Thanks for being with us. We look forward to talking to y'all next time.