Greetings. It’s Eric Bakker, naturopath from New Zealand, author of Candida Crusher and formulator of the Canxida range of products. Thanks once again for checking out my video. I really appreciate all the feedback I’m getting from all my fans out there in YouTube land. Thank you so much. I’m getting some great emails. People are connecting up on Facebook. It’s been absolutely fantastic.
I regularly get questions from different people and a few people now from America and New Zealand and Australia over the past several months, but probably a year, have been asking me about mold and Candida. “Eric, can you tell me about mold? I’m a bit suspect I may have mold in my environment. Could it be causing my yeast infection?” I’m going to go into that in a minute to explain how you can actually work out if mold in your environment is causing a problem. There is a very sneaky and easy way for you to determine that. You’ll think, “Of course. It makes sense.”
I wrote quite a big article on molds in your environment and Candida in my book called Candida Crusher. You can also read more about this topic at yeastinfection.org. I’m sure that I’ve got a few mold articles. There are about 1,100 articles on that website now. I’m going to read a bit out of my book here then I’m going to give you a bit of narration along with that.
This is in New Zealand, but it will relate to your country as well if you live in the UK or if you live in Sweden or Denmark or North America or Canada, any of those countries. Anywhere high up or low down on the globe, you’re going to have a problem with mold. More so even than around the tropics. Especially mold like stachybotrys. It’s a particular black mold that we find a lot in buildings.
An investigation in 2005 revealed that New Zealand’s growing leaky building problem was causing a large increase in dangerous mold in damp homes. Asbestos started on very slowly, yet nobody really took the adverse health related links as seriously until many nonsmokers associated with this industry started to develop serious lung problems like cancer and mesothelioma. Mold is actually called the new asbestos. The US government and the asbestos industry have both been criticized for not acting quickly enough to inform the public of the dangers and to reduce public exposure.
In the late 1970s, leaked court documents proved that asbestos industry officials knew plenty about the dangers of asbestos since the 1930s and yet concealed it from the public. Now, many building companies particularly when building compliances and codes were sloppy, I believe know about this problem, too. But a lot of the compliances now have changed and the codes have been changed here in New Zealand and no doubt in your country. Things have tightened up quite a lot in the building industry. But many leaky buildings that we have now could be still from sloppy practices from a long time ago or from warehouse conversions. From older buildings that have been converted to new living spaces, so you need to be quite careful of these.
Brand new homes built now by registered master builders are usually fantastic. They’re made very well. They’re made very sound, but there are still a lot of housing developments here in New Zealand and no doubt in your country that won’t be fantastic. That will have been built by cowboys with poor compliance and very sloppy building codes. These are particularly the things you’ve got to watch out for. Older homes, hastily built homes, homes built by cowboys and not registered professionals. There are a lot of cowboys out there. People like me who don’t know how to do any construction yet play around with saws and hammers and think they know it all, but in fact, we’re quite useless. I’m not going to give up my day job, by the way. I’m going to stick with natural medicine and leave the construction to the professionals.
What do we know about leaky buildings and mold? Do we really know enough about the potential dangers of mold and how many people are living in leaky or moldy environments? The mold problem is caused by dampness that allows certain toxic varieties of mold to grow in buildings. Many countries have homes that are exposed to mold and damp conditions for many months of the year. Look at Canada, for example. It’s wet quite often. We have the same here in New Zealand, especially in the South Island. We have a lot of rainfall. Island. England, lots of rainfall.
Modern building companies utilizing the latest building materials like to make buildings water tight and this often comes at an expense of poor ventilation and air flow, as homes today are extensively insulated against cold and wet. Many plastics and styrene have been used in housing construction, which can potentially breed mold. And as I mentioned, this coupled with defective construction, particularly from houses since the 1970s were built quite sloppy that can make mold a serious health problem. The popular warehouse conversions as I mentioned.
You need to be very careful. Ask yourself this question. If you go to somebody else’s house, does that cough disappear or that tickle in your throat? You feel you can breathe better because molds do create spores that float through the air attacking ear, nose and throat. In your house, as opposed to going on vacation or somebody else’s house, have you noticed a difference? Do you notice that you just feel more comfortable in someone else’s living environment as opposed to your own? Pay particular attention to that because that can be a red flag for mold or fungi floating in the air in your environment.
It’s a key thing that I’ve heard from people that when they go away, they don’t seem to have the allergies anymore or the tickle in the throat or the sneeze or the cough. Particularly people who spend a lot of time indoors or in certain rooms. If you find that you get these kind of irritations and you can’t work out why and you’ve tried to work on your diet and exclude any potential causes from your diet, but you still have these issues, then try to work out if it’s an environmental cause for this irritation that you get. Different rooms can cause different symptoms with people.
Carefully check around the carpets and look around the ceilings. If you can, get into the roof space with a torch or under the house, and have a good look for mold. There are telltale signs. Your symptoms may get worse. You may notice some black stuff around the skirting boards or around the architrave, the window frames, these are all signs of mold problems in your environment and you better do something about it. Because mold can make you very sick. Very sick, indeed. It’s been linked with autoimmune diseases and many people have even died from serious mold exposure.
That’s just a little bit of information for you on mold and your environment. Is it better when you’re away? Are the symptoms better? Get worse when you’re in your home? Are symptoms worse in damp, humid times of year when it’s raining perhaps? Maybe winter or fall? It’s better in summertime? Maybe you’re spending more time outside. Carefully think about that. That may really hold the clue for you to determine if your problems are really caused by mold in your environment. Of course, this is going to really aggravate an existing yeast infection. Thanks for tuning in.