ATHE_Transcript_Ep 527_Michael Rubino
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert here. I put the Power of Health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness. In each episode, I share safe ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So if you wanna get healthy and get off the dieting for life merry-go-round, I'll give you strategies that will help you look and feel better fast.
All right, so one of the biggest things that can take your health down. Are toxins and you know, we talk a bunch about that in the Virgin diet and of course in sugar impact diet, sugar being a huge one. But sometimes one of the things we don't think about are the toxins that could be living in your [00:01:00] house.
And so we are gonna be talking about mold and mycotoxins today. I am really excited about this. I actually just got done with this interview with Michael Rubino, and this is information that you definitely want to have and it was interesting. when this all came up because just after the recent Hurricane Ian, I was like, you know, we probably should do a retest even though we didn't really get hit.
I wonder how often I should test for mold and all the different questions came up and then boom, Michael showed up on my radar. So how perfect is that? So we are gonna talk today about air quality in our health and home environments and he'll share a little story about what it has done for his weight and weight loss resistance because it is a.
Thing and some of the other symptoms that can happen when you have been chronically exposed to mold things like dementia, brain fog, et cetera. All right. Now we also have a really good giveaway for you. He has created. [00:02:00] A mold hacks guide the 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home.
You're gonna want to grab that. It is at jjvirgin.com/MoldHacks, and he is the author of Mold Medic, which is an expert's guide on mold removal. He's the founder. Home cleanse of revolutionary company with the vision to end the worldwide health epidemic caused by poor air quality and toxic indoor environments.
I literally was taking notes during this whole interview about things that I wanna make sure that I've done with our home, and I think you will want to, but I know you'll want to too. So I will be right back with Michael. Get your pen and paper out.
Michael Rubino, welcome to the show.
Michael Rubino: Thank you for having me.
JJ Virgin: Well, we have dug into, of course, all the health aspects around this, although not [00:03:00] enough. So I am really excited to really get into mold and where it hides and what it does. But, you know, the obvious first question is how did you. Get so into this, and especially being a role mold remediation expert.
Like what, what made you choose this career path?
Michael Rubino: Are, are you saying that not every child's dream is to become a mold remediation expert? Wow.
JJ Virgin: I, no, I bet it is. It's just very few can do it. It's sort of like being an, you know, an NBA player.
Michael Rubino: No, you know, it's one of those things actually we need a lot more people being interested in the topic, especially as kind of I've gotten into things.
I, I really think it, it plays a big part of our health. Just making sure that our environment is is a healthy environment and it's something that's kind of gotten lost on us a bit from a societal standpoint. You know how I got into it is actually my dad's been a restoration contractor since I'm five years.
So I've been around construction restoration pretty much my entire life.
JJ Virgin: And restoration contractor [00:04:00] is just someone who does a home remodel. What is that?
Michael Rubino: So for my dad, it was basically anyone, anytime someone had a fire, you know, it's one of those tragic things that happened. My dad is, was typically the guy in the New York City area that would come and fix it.
You know, when we have fires, most people don't think about this until they actually experience it, but all of our stuff gets damaged. I mean, the house gets put out with water, so, You know, pretty much everything is lost. There's beams and structural components that are charred that need to be rebuilt.
It's this big thing. And a lot of people don't realize that somebody's gotta come in and put that back together. So that's kind of what I've been in, what I've seen my entire life. But I'll be honest, I wasn't really interested in it until, you know, probably later on in life when I started to.
People getting sick. And that's when that's when I became more interested in it. Cuz I, the type of person I am, I, I wanna do something that's gonna be meaningful. Mm-hmm. . And I think it's kind of what I've stumbled on, I think, I think it feels really meaningful to me.
JJ Virgin: And don't you [00:05:00] think that the reason there's not more of you is that this thing still is, is really not known?
Michael Rubino: Totally. I mean, I think it's no secret. The American dream is about finding opportunity and then going out and making yourself something of it. And I think that for a lot of people, they don't realize the effects that our environment can really have on our health, both positively and negatively.
JJ Virgin: Yeah.
Which is like, you know, we focus so much on. Hopefully we do in this show focus so much on what we're eating, however, you know, I mean, that is one area of your environment, but gosh, the scariest lecture I ever went to, I went to the American College of Alternative Medicine and they had a whole thing on toxicity and they were talking about.
You know, outgassing of new carpets and dry cleaning and all of that. But the scariest lecture of all was the lecture on mycotoxins and mold. And you start to look at it and you're like, holy [00:06:00] smokes, . So, yeah. So let's dig into this cuz you know, we just. Bought two houses in Florida. So you can imagine that one of the first things that I did before we closed on the houses was to really look deep into them for any mold issues.
And then of course, you know, here we are in Florida. A couple of my friends during this last hurricane in literally got their homes flooded. Yeah. And you're wondering like, can you really actually. Fix that. So I wanna dig into all of that, but before we dig into how to figure out if you've got mold, what to do, et cetera, what, why is this a problem?
I mean, what does it do to you? What would be some symptoms? Like, why is this such a big deal for people?
Michael Rubino: Well, I mean, it's become a big deal really since the 1970s. And that, for those that don't know, going back into history here in the 1970s, we had Nixon as president. We had you know, pretty much a lot of conflict with Russia and China.
And one [00:07:00] of the things that, that we have done in the seventies was we started racing towards energy efficiency. And energy efficiency is this concept where, you know, we keep more energy we keep better use of energy. So things like having insulation, less air exchange from inside to outside really allowing the energy that we're using to be more efficient.
That has led to this new development of an indoor environment. And the modern building, if you guys don't know, it's, it's pretty much a lot of spray foam and a lot of tight building houses, so we'd. Keep that energy from escaping. But there's a consequence to that. And the consequences, whatever's inside with you is going to be impacting you a lot more.
Why? Because there's less volume of air. So when there was more air exchanged from outside to inside, you had a, a higher volume of air that you would be breathing in. With that being said, it would dilute some of the contaminants we might have in our house, like chemicals, VOCs, mold, bacteria, mycotoxins, other biotoxins.
Now we're [00:08:00] kind of stuck with our environment a lot more. With that being said, it's, I've seen this trending problem of. People getting more and more sick as to the effects of their environment. And that's really what's, what's been very interesting to me. Mold definitely being a high culprit.
Bacteria and, and mold kind of go hand in hand, but we always look at what the root cause of all this is. Well, the root cause is one, not, not enough air exchange. And two moisture. I mean, moisture brings bacteria, it brings mold. And these, these types of problems can exist when we have them in our home.
JJ Virgin: So I've got a couple friends in the functional medicine space who've worked a lot in mold, and I got a shout out to Dr. Anne Shippy and Dr. Jill Carnahan and, and then my buddy, Dave Asprey actually wrote, did a documentary on it called Moldy. , just chronicling some of what can happen to you if you are exposed to mold.
What are some of the things that you've seen out there? You know, I know you're more on the remediation side, but if it [00:09:00] wasn't causing a problem, there'd be no reason to remediate it. Right? Right, exactly. So what does it do to someone if they are living in a moldy environment?
Michael Rubino: So I'm gonna tell you one of probably one of the most extreme cases I've seen, just because I think it's important to paint that picture and then we can talk about what are some of the everyday symptoms that people experience.
From my experience basically we had a woman named Shannon. Shannon was in Florida as well, and Shannon was, was really sick. She, you know, after had several water damage events of which she thought she had properly repair. She started to have a health decline. I mean, so much so that she was bed bedbound 90% of the time.
Her set, her actual appetite was so dysfunctional that she had to get a GJ feeding tube installed into her lower intestine to essentially give her the nutrients she needed to keep her alive. She was a mother of three, but, you know, felt that she wasn't the mother she could be because she was bedbound, because she, she needed care, [00:10:00] herself.
She was a wife and, and again, had had that same feeling. What was really interesting about this was that, you know, she was misdiagnosed with 50 different things. She had a hundred different symptoms that she experienced, and, you know, it took her, I think, 40 or 50 different doctors. before someone said, Hey, have you thought about mold in your home or have you checked for mold in your home?
After working with her, I mean within a week we, we found obviously problems in her home within a week of her moving out and she moved out to this little RV on her property that she rented to get remediation done. Mm-hmm. and within a week, GJ feeding tubes removed. She's no longer bedbound, she's out walking.
You know, I don't want to say she was a hundred percent better in seven days. I mean, significantly better in seven. And that, that tells you how extreme this can be, especially if we let this go unchecked for such a long time, three years Wow. Of suffering, you know. But the average, one
JJ Virgin: of the good [00:11:00] signs that we've used is like, okay, leave your house.
Do you get better or worse? You know, ,
Michael Rubino: that's a good, that's a good point.
JJ Virgin: As long as you're going someplace that's not equally moldy.
Michael Rubino: Right, right. And there's different types of mold and obviously everybody's inherently different and has is gonna be, you know, have different types of sensitivities to one or another.
But it's very interesting to kind of see all this just develop, you know, the average person. I would say a lot of the complaints we get are brain fog, chronic fatigue. Weight gain or weight loss you know allergenic symptoms brain, brain degenerative disorders and diseases in kids. You can get, you know, symptoms that mimic pans and pandas, behavioral issues in elderly.
You can get early onset of dementia, Alzheimer's. So it's, it's just got a big brevity to this thing. And, you know, I think with Covid we learned. , no two people are the same. You could experience wildly different symptoms from the same thing. And so it's kind of helped us understand how this. It can have [00:12:00] such a wide reaching effect on us.
JJ Virgin: Yeah, there's a couple things to add in here. First of all, I never knew that about the 1970s and the energy situation, and that makes a ton of sense. But then you look just at our detoxification pathways and everyone is genetically different. So some people are really good detoxifiers fires and some people are.
Not good detoxifiers. You know, you've gotta detoxify through your sweat, your pee and your poop. And I remember back when I was an exercise physiologist, I had clients who just couldn't sweat. I'm like, holy smokes. You know? Now I know how problematic that is. So you have that first part of some people just not being good detoxifiers.
or they are just not doing the things their body needs to do to detoxify every day. You know, we all go on these cleanses, but the reality is being bombarded every day, and your body isn't just a chemistry lab, it's a history book. And so you look at this and go, all right. . So you're living in a house, you maybe you use some personal care products and some cleaning products that have [00:13:00] toxins being good detoxifiers. Haven't looked at that yet.
Your skin's a sieve on the personal care products. So they're getting in, maybe you're eating some gluten that's got glyphosate and you've just painted your walls and put new carpeting in. And maybe you go to the dry cleaner, , which is its own host I have One of my someone who worked in my company, her, her whole husband's side of the family, all were in the dry cleaning business.
Every single one of them came down with a horrific disease. I mean, like ankylosing spondylitis, cancers, I mean, just awful stuff. And so you have. Other things going on. And then it could be just the mold is just a thing that tips you over your body can only handle so much. Right. And what we see on the weight loss side, cause I in my whole world is weight loss and weight loss resistance.
And what get gets in the way of you losing weight and causes you to gain weight. And I remember early on when I was teaching this course to doctors and I was digging through everything I could find in the library. and what I discovered was that [00:14:00] your body, of course is going to, is going to try to store all this stuff because if it's floating around your body, it's wreaking havoc and if your body can't get rid of it, it's gotta do something and it will store it in your fat tissue because toxins like fat.
And so then what your body will do is. Slow down. It will cool down. It will slow your thyroid so that you get, it will make insulin resistance. In fact, the NHANES studies showed that it wasn't the obesity that was creating the diabetes, it was the, it was the toxins in the fat. They were changing the body's way.
They handled it, handled insulin, became more insulin resistance. So you held onto the fat, you held onto the toxins. So, and then you can just imagine, it just gets worse and worse and worse. So, You know, this is one of those things that I know we're gonna talk a little more about how to check your house.
And I'm thinking clearly I'm gonna need to pull on Jill or Ann and go through , how to detoxify mold. And we'll have both those resources too in the show notes because they've got great [00:15:00] info. But it isn't something you can just pretend isn't happening. You do need to be super duper aware of it. So let's dig into then, You know, and again, I just bought two houses and we'd had 'em checked, but then I was, after a year in, I'm like, do I need to check it again?
Et cetera. How? How do we know if we have mold in the house, how does it get there? What do we need to be aware of?
Michael Rubino: Well, I think it gets there because typically water is the main culprit, but living in Florida, I live in Florida too, by the way. We have what's called high humidity almost year. Humidity for those that don't know is a moisture content in the air.
So if we have a lot of moisture content in the air and our, you know, indoor humidity reaches 60% or more for at least a period of 24 to 48 hours. We're in that danger zone where mold can start to grow. So things like in Florida, you want to, you know, dehumidification systems, you want H V A C systems appropriately sized so that they're working as they're intended to pull that moisture outta the [00:16:00] air.
You all wanna really maintain the home to prevent leaks. You know, a lot of people don't realize we should be. Checking our roofs every year, checking our doors and windows every year, making sure that they're the structural integrity is good and there's not active water intrusion, so we can make the repairs ahead of time instead of when it's too late.
Plumbing leaks happen as well, of course, that, that create this issue. What's really interesting about mold is we have over a hundred thousand different species that we know. You know, there's about 36 of them that we know of from a built environment standpoint that typically happen with water damage.
Things like penicillium, aspergillus. Stacky, bium, stacky Bs for those that don't know, that's like the toxic black mold that you hear the media talk about. But it's, it's very interesting to see because for so many years everybody tested the air, right? It's like, well, if I wanna check my air quality, I test the air.
Right? That would make sense. Except for the fact that air testing, for those that don't know the technology, it really only tests about a three foot radius. And I found that really interesting because the [00:17:00] further away you test from where the problem is, the less likely you are to find that there's a problem.
So that kind of brought this whole new technology into, into development. By the E P A in about 2015, they released what's called the RMI which is the relative moldiness index. Now what's what's interesting about the index itself is it's, it's not perfect. But what, what I really love is the PCR technology behind this index.
And for those that that are listening, you know, we, I think we've all known what PCR is after covid. And it's essentially, it's looking at the d n A of what's there and how you actually test for this in a home is you test the dust. And so we're like, wait a second. So we're not testing our air anymore, we're testing our dust.
Why is that? Well, because whatever is in the air is eventually gonna settle where our dust settles. And so if you want to know what you're exposed to, you're actually better off testing your dust to see what you're exposed to. Now if you've ever sat down on a sunny day by the couch near a window and you saw that ray of [00:18:00] light peer through, and then you saw that fun stuff floating around, that's our dust.
And what's interesting about toxins and mold is they actually bind to our dust once they settle with our dust. So how do they really impact the body? Well, because we're breathing in our dust and we're breathing in what's in our dust at the same. So that's what I've really started to figure out over the past few years.
And so now it's become, wait, wait. It's not just about remediation, it's also about cleaning. Because if we just remediate our wall, what about all the mold and toxins that have been created as long as the mold was in our wall? And what about the mold in our HVAC too, right? A lot of these things don't get addressed in the typical sense of remediation.
So it's become more than just remediation now. Now it's about how to create, recreate healthy environments. And that's kind of the journey I've been on over the past decade.
JJ Virgin: Ooh. Well, okay, we're going to, we're gonna take a quick break, but like now I have more questions, , now I have more questions from what you just said.
So we will be right back. [00:19:00] Hang with us.
Okay, so you talked about cleaning and it made me think of my, one of my dear friends who's a doctor who an an integrative psychiatrist who had massive mold issues. She lived in Marina Del Rey, California. Okay. And she told me she had to throw everything. Away. Like all of her books, her clothes, everything.
Now, is that the case or could she have washed things or like, you know, I heard that, I'm like, holy smokes. You know, furniture like, just got rid of everything.
Michael Rubino: Well, I would say that most, most things can be cleaned. Like certain things, you know, are porous. And there's no guarantee that you're gonna get everything out of porus contents.
And I think that's really the, the big problem there. But what's really interesting, like how I look at all of this, I think that it's a two part problem. Typically once you get, once you get that toxicity, you then become sensitized. It's like your fight or flight response kicks. and then [00:20:00] it's like you'd norm, you would go to a place where you have a normal level of mold and suddenly you're reacting.
So there's, there's that problem that I think Dr. Jill and Dr. Ann Shippy helped solve for folks. And that's like, kind of like detoxing and oh, you know, opening back up these pathways. You mentioned earlier about sweating. I, I have a funny story about that cuz I was detoxing back in January, and it took me seven days of sauna work to actually start to sweat.
Wow. That's how much my pathways were blocked myself. So, you know, it's, it's really interesting to see how all this, all this comes together, but health is holistic. It's a whole ecosystem. Right. It's not just, you know, One thing or another, and I think that's what we're learning.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. I I get in my, I have a sunlight and sauna.
Shout out to Connie Zack, and we literally get in every single morning. Now our new routine is we meditate, we do Dr. Joe Dispenza meditation in the sauna, and then we go get in the cold plunge, which I hate. However, , it makes a big difference. But I am convinced [00:21:00] that you know, detoxification is one of the single most important things we have to do with everything going on.
I. People tend to think of it as like the food you eat, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. So if someone wanted to test, then they wanted to test their home, well how would they go about doing it? Especially, do they need an expert? Can they do it themselves? What do they do?
Michael Rubino: So I think it, it really depends.
You know, I think the first thing that people should do is test themselves, and that's by testing the. It's way more affordable than hiring in a professional to do it. There's a lot of reliable labs out there that can help process this data. Now it's PCR technology, so we, we can rely on it. We know that it's effective, and we're taking that and we're analyzing the d n A of what's in our dust.
I think that's,
JJ Virgin: and does it matter where the dust is in your, like what if the dust is way far away from where the.
Michael Rubino: So you want to, you want to get like a composite, meaning you want to collect some dust from each room in your house. So you just get a, a screen of what you're being exposed to. Much like when you're not [00:22:00] feeling well, you go to the doctor, the doctor's like, okay, let's screen you and let's see what could be it.
Right? This is a great screening tool of what am I exposed to and what's in my house and is it abnormal? And I think from there, The, the data that it tells you then sets you back up for this process of, all right, now I gotta figure out where this is coming from. And from there, you might want to bring in a professional for help for that.
But I think for so long what we've done is we've brought in professionals who then have taken like an air sample in the center of our house, and then they've given us this false sense of security. Like everything is fine. Well, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes everything is fine within that three foot radius at that exact moment.
But more should have been done to really check. And I think that's the key. It's, it's switching how we've been doing things in the past to a new and better way of doing things to really be safe.
JJ Virgin: And where does one find these tests and what do they
Michael Rubino: cost? So one example is you can go to like thedusttest.com but you can also google different mold [00:23:00] labs across the country and you can find different what's called RMI or PCR testing for the.
Something like this costs somewhere around the $250 price point, which if you've ever gotten an inspection, they're around a thousand dollars. So you're about 25% of the cost, cutting out the middle man and testing yourself for the very first time. Well,
JJ Virgin: and it's more accurate, it sounds like, from what you've just told me now, I'm wondering how accurate our tests were that we did when we bought our houses.
Michael Rubino: Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you one and we're gonna find out for sure.
JJ Virgin: Oh boy. Okay. . And then how often should you be doing this? Is this an annual thing or just have you had like, you know, especially if you live in Florida, like, or any, I mean, you look at most places like I, you know, Florida's humid, but you know, then you've got Seattle and Portland are wet.
So like how often should you be doing.
Michael Rubino: I mean, my personal opinion is I, I, I do it every year, you know, for less than 10 cents a day. You know, you can make sure that nothing is changed inside of your home's environment. You know, I think we need [00:24:00] to switch to more of a proactive mindset when it comes to our home and our, our built environment, because typically we don't do things until there's a problem, until it's too late, and that's when it costs the.
You know, when we find out that there's some abnormalities earlier on, you know that small little pinhole can be repaired pretty quickly, but once it starts gushing and gaping into a massive problem, that's when things start to really take a turn. And now we have big remediation costs and big medical costs all at the same time.
So, Personally, I think once a year to be proactive is probably the best step forward
JJ Virgin: because when someone comes in, so let's say that you, you find that you have molds. So then you bring in a company and they do the remediation. I got, does insurance even cover this? And what do they do when they do remediation and what should they be doing?
Michael Rubino: So reme, the insurance company doesn't always cover everything there is to cover with respects to remediation. And it's a very complex topic, but [00:25:00] essentially, When you ensure a home you, they ensure what is considered a covered loss. That's the term that's used to describe. What you're co, what they're gonna cover for you and what they're not.
And a lot of the problems that we have in our home are not covered, unfortunately. Like if our basement starts leaking, that's considered water seepage and that's not a covered loss. But if a pipe breaks in our basement, then it's a covered loss, right? You see how there's semantics that. Really define what's covered and what's not covered.
And for, for most of the problems that I find, they're not so obvious they're hidden behind a wall, and they might have been happening for years. And the statute of limitation is it had to have happened within the last two years, or it's not covered. So it brings apart this whole complexity to, am I covered?
Am I not covered? And typically people end up getting covered for some of the problems, but not all. So now it becomes a big, you know, maintenance or renovation issue that they have to confront all at once. [00:26:00]
JJ Virgin: Yeah. Wow. All right. So now. mold versus mycotoxin. What, like, let's, what's the difference between these two?
Michael Rubino: Okay, so Myco means of a fungus. So mycotoxin, a toxin of a fungus. Mycotoxins are produced by mold mold. Not all species of mold produce mycotoxins, or at least we, that we know of today. Science is ever evolving. We do know that there's certain species of mold that produce toxins. Now, if you look the actual F D A they have set thresholds of acceptability for mycotoxins in our agricultural supply because it's a big problem in grains and in food.
But the E P A has not really set any thresholds of looking at it from an indoor perspective, which is where, you know, we're trying to push the industry forward because the reality of it is if we know it shouldn't be in our food cuz it's toxic to humans and pets, well, it shouldn't be in our homes either.
And basically [00:27:00] what causes mycotoxins to be produced? Well, when mold feels threatened, it's their self-defense mechanism. Just like how a skunk sprays you when they're threatened. While mold produces mycotoxins when it's threaten. What makes mold threatened? Well, other mold for one. So you may have aspergillus and stack ebare fighting for the same real estate in your wall cavity, right from that window leak.
And you are just an innocent bystander to that. So you have chemical warfare going on inside of our walls and ceilings. There's also some studies suggesting that. You know, all of this wifi and wireless technology could also cause some issues where mold might feel threatened because it's essentially new radiation that has been developed in, in modern times.
And I think there's probably other things too that we're just not aware of yet, but it's. It's really interesting how we're kind of the innocent bystander in our own home from some of these
JJ Virgin: things. So the mycotoxins and grains you know, I know that, that peanuts are a big one. Coffee's another one.
Are the [00:28:00] levels that they're saying are okay? Really? Okay. ,
Michael Rubino: you know that, that's a good question. , are they really? Okay. I mean, ideally we want as little as possible, right? Or, or none detected. You know, I, I think that we have this complex issue between trying to balance economies with health, right? And if you look at what the EPA and what the FDA do, that's literally what, what they do.
They just balance. How do we make things healthy while being economical? You know, I, I surely think that we can do better on almost all fronts, but I think that they set a threshold with what they feel is reasonable and if they went lower that it may, you know, impact certain farmers and other things.
So it's a very delicate balance. But I, that's,
JJ Virgin: Jill Carnahan actually tells the story of this because she grew up on a. And her dad, she talks about the mycotoxins in [00:29:00] the grains and the levels that there were, which got her sick. Of course, you know, and you just wonder with this shift into plant-based eating, if we're going to exacerbate this problem,
Michael Rubino: Well, it's, it is highly possible that that would happen, right? Yeah. . Because as we shift more into plants and we have this issue with mold and mycotoxins that we know of, that, that really contaminates our food supply, this is a big problem. I mean I think it's something that we have to kind of put our foot down as a society and say, We don't want mycotoxins in our food, in our homes.
Yeah. We want to care more about what goes into our body. Both, every time we take a breath and every time we take a bite, and I think if we do that, we're gonna be a lot better off.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. The big question with the food is how would you know. . There's no stamp. There's no nothing. I know the coffee that I've used for years, that's one of the things they do is look for mycotoxins because it's coffee.
Such a, a [00:30:00] crop of mycotoxins. And from everything I've heard, the US requirements are lower than what they have in, in south America and Europe for mycotoxins.
Michael Rubino: Yeah, lower. You know, it's, it's really interesting. You're right. I mean, there's a lot of different issues, especially in coffee. You know, I too buy coffee that test itself for mycotoxins, but that's only because the coffee company itself is going through that laborious process to do it themselves.
The f d A doesn't. , right? And so you have all these companies, I don't wanna mention any names, but a lot of the big box brands that you see in the supermarket, they're not testing for mycotoxins. There's a threshold set by the f d A, but if we think that they're going to every single plant and shop across the, the world to verify I think we're a little mistaken there, right?
That the resources weren't there.
JJ Virgin: Well, yeah. How do we know if that threshold's even? Okay, if your body's. History book. I mean, maybe for someone who's detoxifying really well and doing their sauna and everything else, but someone who's already got, you know, mold [00:31:00] issues that could throw 'em over the top.
Totally. So yeah, it's, it's it's frightening that there isn't actually anything you can do to tell that. But I will say that. . You know, it's why I took peanuts out of the Virgin Diet when I started to look at that one cuz it's one of the more mycotoxiny crops and corn is one and coffee's one. So, I mean, it was, where I first learned about it was from my buddy Dave Asprey.
Cuz he'd, you know, had mold issues, . And so, you know, that's where it came from. How effective. Are things like air purifies or is that something that we should all have in our house too, to help with this? Or is that just kind of putting a bandage over a big gaping wound?
Michael Rubino: Well you know, it can be both, right?
It can be effective and it could also be a bandage. And it's like any other tool out there, you have to use it properly. My favorite air purifiers are one that does the whole house, and so they typically go in the hvac. They do two things. They protect the HVAC unit from getting contaminated cuz they block [00:32:00] small particles from entering the unit.
And they also are filtering, you know, the lungs of the home, if you will, the HVAC system itself. Those, those are much better in my opinion because they do two things at once. You know, they're obviously sometimes. If you're renting or you know, you don't wanna install something into the unit for whatever reason, you know, you get the plugin ones.
But what they're doing is they're essentially putting a vacuum inside of a room or inside of your home. They're trapped, they're filtering the air, they're trapping out some of the particles that we're breathing in, so, There's definitely effective for that. But if we have all of these problems all over the home, you know and we just buy air purifiers, that's not necessarily gonna solve our problems
So it's just really just making sure people are aware of that. You know, I get people that are like, Hey, look at my levels. They're off the charts and I'm not feeling well. And I'm like, well, I could see why. You know, you have, you have some pretty big problems. . They're like, well, I, you know, I think I'm just gonna get some air purifiers and I'll be fine.
And it's like, well, I, I, [00:33:00] I really don't think you should go that route, , you know, I don't know that you'll be fine. To be truthful. So it's, it's interesting, you know, it's, it's important that people have the right mindset. Like, we can't heal when we're living inside the problem. And I think that really needs to drive home the, the folks, because some people's places are, are really.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. Wow. So I, I've gotta go check and see if we've got an air purifier in our HVAC system. Just made a note on that one. . So you have a freebie that you're giving everyone, and I'm gonna put it at jjvirgin.com/moldhacks. And it is 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. Which I hope now that you've listened to this, you're like, okay, I definitely need to and want to make sure that I'm doing that cuz you know, having had so many friends who've been so sick with mold, I see the, I see what it can do.
And it was interesting, Michael. We were moving out of our house in Rancho Santa Fe, California. We'd been renting the house and it [00:34:00] had an area outside the house that was dampened water would just. and we are going to move, and I'm taking out my dresses out of one of the, the back closet near that room near that area and there is black mold.
And I'm like, holy smokes. You know, like, and fortunately we were far enough, hopefully away from it. I didn't notice a thing health-wise, but maybe if we'd lived there longer. But it's like, it's. It's, you know, it's pretty scary that this stuff going on. So definitely something to be aware of will be testing our houses.
And I'm assuming you have the test stuff in the, the Mold Hacks guide? Oh yeah,
Michael Rubino: definitely.
JJ Virgin: Good, good, good. Because, Honestly, you can be doing everything else, right, but if you are getting hit with this, this can take you down. And I've seen it happen and it's like really, really frightening. And then it takes a while.
You get super sensitive.
Michael Rubino: I mean, even, even myself after like 10 years of exposure, I mean, I. This the past year and a half to two years, I started gaining [00:35:00] weight like wildfire. And you know, it's interesting cuz if you see my wife, she's healthy and fit and I eat the same things. You know, we eat like literally lots of vegetables protein, really no sugar, carbs, like almost never, right?
Mm-hmm. . And it's just really interesting how all of a sudden I started gaining all this. and the second I started detoxing, I think I lost like 35 pounds in two months. I mean, it was crazy. I'm still on this journey myself following a lot of the tips that you promote that are very effective. But it's really interesting because, you know, I would've never thought just because it wasn't happening to my own home.
But even with masks and everything else, you're not a never a hundred percent protected. And I think that made me realize like detoxing is really, really important and you know, cuz otherwise you can do everything else Right and still have
JJ Virgin: a problem. Yeah, it is. It is. Literally early on in my career in weight loss I was fortunate I.
A group of women to away [00:36:00] for a week and everything back then was the bank account model of weight loss. You know, if you wanna lose weight, you need to create a 500 calorie deficit a day and you will lose a pound and a thousand, you'll lose two pounds, which sounds awesome if we were a math equation, but we're not.
And, and I was under this, the idea that these people were paying me all this money to cheat. I was like, why is this, you know, because, and when I took them away and saw. When I tightly controlled everything, some people lost weight and some people gained weight. I was like, all right, clearly something else is going on.
And, and it's complicated. It's not just one thing. But you know, I had a gal go and get, she didn't tell me she was gonna do this. She behind my back went and did a gastric bypass. Now it didn't. and I said, I could have told you it didn't work. It wasn't gonna work because your issue wasn't eating too much.
Your issue is you're toxic. We've gotta reduce and this isn't gonna help there. , you know, if anything, now we've got more problems cuz now you [00:37:00] can't absorb the nutrients that are gonna help you detoxify. Now we have to like really deal with this. So it's just an important thing, important reminder for everybody that, again, your, your body is not a bank account.
That, gosh, I still see that model. Weight loss coming up and while calories count where they come from, counts more. But you have to look at your whole body and what it's doing and the hormone responses and it is so clear cut that if you are being barraged by toxins, that your body, in fact, there was a.
Dr. Tremble, I think out of Canada, did really interesting research all around this and how your body just starts to hold on and cool down and keep it in to protect you. So, you know, just look beyond it. Don't fall prey to the latest juice cleanse that will make you worse. Not better. You know, it's like you don't need to bombard your body with sugar.
That's not gonna help you . You know, you actually need amino acids to detox and. You know, a sauna is a, and especially an infrared sauna [00:38:00] is amazing cuz it's with a lot of these things they store in your fat. In order to get it outta your fat, especially these chemicals and mycotoxins, you need to get into it with these infrared penetration.
So there you go. That's amazing. Thank you so much. Yes. Hopefully we haven't scared people. We've empowered people with all of this. And of course I wanna remind you again, jjvirgin.com/Moldhacks and you will get Michael's 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home. And I thank you so much for the work that you do in hanging out with me today.
Michael Rubino: Likewise. So, so appreciative of everything you do, and thanks for having me.
JJ Virgin: All right, one more quick reminder, first of all. Was that amazing or what? Again, in the show notes, I'm gonna include links to my, one of my very best friends, Dr. Ann Shippy, who is a mold expert, along with another amazing woman, Dr. Chill, [00:39:00] Carnahan incredible experts on mold toxicity, and Dave Asprey did a.
A, a movie, a documentary called Moldy. It is literally when I first met him and he was telling me about the mold in coffee, the mycotoxins. That's where I started to learn all about this to begin with. And he had major mold issues, which is what drove him to. Search for coffee that he could lab test to make sure it did not have mold in it.
And that's where Bulletproof came from. So we will have all that in the show notes. And remember, you will be able to grab the guide as well, and you'll definitely want to get the 10 mold hacks you can do to prevent mold in your home, and you get that at jjvirgin.com/moldhacks. All right, if you've not yet subscribed, it's simple, just go to subscribetojj.com.
And while you're at it, if you leave a review, I would be so happy. Thank you. Thank you. All right. See you next time. Bye.[00:40:00]