In this episode of Mold Docs, Michael Rubino sits down with Dr. Jess, a certified Gerson practitioner, functional medicine leader, and awareness advocate. Dr. Jess explains how she entered the world of mold and began helping people detox their bodies after exposure to this indoor contaminant. She discusses her process of figuring out if someone is suffering from mold exposure, detox strategies, and the new app that she established to help even more people on their healing journey.
Dr. Jess is a former hospitalist, internal medicine-based medical doctor, and certified Gerson Practitioner. She is an expert in the areas of stealth infections, environmental toxicity, regenerative medicine, ozone, and cannabis. Her passion lies in uncovering the mystery behind chronic illness, whether that be stealth infections, heavy metals, stress/trauma, or other environmental toxicities. There are real, root-cause answers to why the body might be malfunctioning.
Trained in medicine at the University of Louisville, Dr. Jess experienced what many of her patients experienced: deep anxiety, hormonal imbalances, and adrenal dysfunction. She sought answers to uncover the root cause of the disease – something she thought she had learned in medical school.
After working as an M.D. in a hospital for 6 years, Dr. Jess realized that she needed to investigate alternatives to today’s modern medical industry, which "treats every ill with a pill." She became trained in Gerson Therapy, functional medicine, nutrigenomics, and ozone in her efforts to help her patients with chronic disease solutions. She is now an expert in the fields of Lyme, parasites, and the health hazards of mold. She is an international keynote speaker with her own former line of Dr. Jess products.
In this episode, they dive into:
1:00: Dr. Jess details how she came up with her trademark quote, "Kill. Bind. Sweat." and how it catapulted her into the limelight of mold treatment. As most people aren’t ready to just jump in and kill all the bad things in their bodies, it’s important to balance prepping them for this process and then slowly adding steps as their bodies are ready.
2:30: How prevalent is mold toxicity? Dr. Jess talks about just how many patients she’s seen who have suffered from mold exposure thanks to the rising number of water-damaged buildings out there. "It's overwhelming, actually. And so, it's my least favorite part of the job: telling people that they have mold in their homes." She explains her theory of why this phenomenon seems to be occurring more and more.
6:00: Dr. Jess refers to hypersensitive people as canaries in the coal mine, and explains that being responsive to mold isn’t completely a bad thing; it’s a warning system that something is wrong in that indoor environment.
8:00: Dr. Jess and Michael discuss the various ways of testing both the home and the body for mold and mycotoxins and how factors such as suppressed immune systems can throw a wrench in testing protocols. "I wish that testing was covered by insurance. It's not, guys. This is not even recognized in mainstream conventional medicine as a problem. So, it's super helpful for people like us, doctors and remediators, to know for sure if this is what's making you sick, and the only way we know for sure is by finding the spores in the home and then correlating those with the same species of mold that can make that mycotoxin. Because one species of mold can make multiple different mycotoxins and one mycotoxin can be from different species of mold, so it can get kind of complicated, and we need to be able to match up those volatile organic compounds called mycotoxins that they make in the house and we need to correlate that in your body."
11:00: Dr. Jess dives into how everyone responds to exposure differently, meaning that treatment plans all tend to look a little different, as well as determining if someone is suffering from mold toxicity. "I really have to look at how sick the patient is to evaluate what they can handle." She goes through some of her top tips for helping detox the body from toxic buildup, including investing in a sauna or taking binders like zeolite and bentonite clay.
19:30: Dr. Jess discusses her new app and the reasoning behind its creation. Since she couldn’t duplicate herself, she needed a way to help guide as many individuals as possible through their healing journey. "Everyone deserves to know that their body can reverse disease and heal. Everyone deserves to know this information. How can I broadcast it out to a bigger audience, besides just this one-on-one, because they don't really need me, they just need a guide to show their body how to do the work."
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