William Rea, M.D. Transcript

Transcription

1 William Rea, M.D. Transcript Dave Asprey: Dr. Rea, how did you get involved in treating mold illness in the first place? William Rea, M.D.: It's been a long time. It's been about 30 years ago and I had a son who almost died, he had asthma. At that time I was a cardiac surgeon and they wanted to pump him full of steroids and not find the causes and I had a little altercation with the pulmonologist and I said, "Well, why aren't you going to find the causes?" He said, "I can't do that," he said. I said, "Why I think you ought to," and he said, "Well, if you're so damn smart figure it out yourself." I said, "Listen, for my son, I will," and I did. The kid is now, I don't know, he's 47 now. No drugs, no medication, no shots, nothing. Dave Asprey: You hacked it, all of it. William Rea, M.D.: When I saw that I said, "Well, my gosh this has lots of implications for society. We better really study this real carefully, and that with a chemical problem and that we ll have to standardize it for people and see what we can do to help people. That's basically how I got into it. Dave Asprey: When you were trained as a general physician did you receive any training in fungal diseases or mycotoxins? William Rea, M.D.: I wasn't trained as a general physician. I was a cardio vascular surgeon so that meant I had to go through all specialties including pulmonary, and of course a lot of pulmonary diseases at that time were fungal. We did have quite a little information on it but not enough of course as we've had today. Dave Asprey: Did you get mold training when you studied environmental medicine? William Rea, M.D.: Yes, very much so. I got mold training with the environmentalists all over the country and all over the world. 1

2 Dave Asprey: Excellent. How do you test someone who comes to you for mold treatment? William Rea, M.D.: The way we test people that come to use for mold treatment is of course, we get a good history and physical. Unfortunately, a lot of times we can smell it on them, and I have to watch that they don't contaminate the clinic because of that, because they re a lot of times unaware that this happens. First, we do a good history and physical exam and then we evaluate the immune system, the T and B cells, the gamma globulins, they complements, and then we would probably do a provocation test of the different major molds, things like aspergillus, cladosporium and so on. Dave Asprey: Why are some people sensitive to mold and some people aren't? William Rea, M.D.: Why do some people have brown hair and other people have blonde hair? You don't really know, do you? But one thing we know for sure is that people who get over molded usually are living in a moldy environment. Yes, there may be some people who get sicker in that moldy environment but nobody usually does well in a moldy environment, and of course the other thing is that some people have ability to accommodate for a period of time before they come down with like say cancer or heart disease or something that's fatal. That biochemical individuality is very crucial to these patients. Dave Asprey: Do you come across environments where say you have a husband and wife and one of them has mold illness, but the other one living in the same house doesn't have those symptoms? William Rea, M.D.: We do come across people who live in the same house one has problems and one doesn't. We've seen that frequently and of course that's the resistant factor that people have, why does one guy get the flu and the other guy doesn t? Dave Asprey: Do you think in those environments that the partner who's not experiencing symptoms is at increased risks for cancer and heart disease or other problems down the line? 2

3 William Rea, M.D.: Yes, you have to see whether people living in the same environment may have initial resistance and then as time goes on if they don't do something they'll develop other disease. I just saw a patient from Turkey who lived in Germany for six years in a moldy house and the wife didn't get so many problems but he had, the point where he had a amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he had atrophy of his muscles and was basically non functional. There you would see that again. Dave Asprey: Is there a connection between ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig's disease and mycotoxins? William Rea, M.D.: ALS probably is the most difficult one to do and we don't know whether it's all due to mold or whether there's a lot of chemicals that can cause the same things, there are foods can cause it. We just don't know for sure on that particular one. Now Parkinson's disease, there's no question it's an environmentally triggered disease. Dave Asprey: What are the most common symptoms that you see on people who are sick from mold? William Rea, M.D.: The most common symptoms probably fatigue, muscle aches, joint aches, they just don't feel well, headaches. Some have coughs and some will have a runny rose all the time, sneezing, in milder cases we'll have that type of thing. Then the severe cases they have blood vessel dysfunction, they'll have spontaneous bruises. They'll have little red spots called petechiae. They'll actually get acne, adult acne. It's a vast, vast spectrum of type, symptoms that you see in these people. Dave Asprey: What about long-term effects? You mentioned ALS in one person who who has been exposed, maybe that was due to mold, maybe it wasn't but what are the other long-term effects of living in a moldy house? William Rea, M.D.: Long-term effects in a moldy house can be the neurodegenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and just plain old brain 3

4 degeneration where you get short-term memory loss, imbalance, you can't function well. Or you may have heart or blood vessel disease where the small blood, very tiny blood vessels get into spasm and then if you don't get enough oxygen extracted into the tissues and then you get severe debilitated symptoms, and of course some of the patients get severe respiratory disease like asthma and respiratory failure. The other category is that some people will have GIF's at all the time, they get bloating and gas and constipation or diarrhea. Other people, the females may have premenstrual tension or they may have endometrial dysfunction, their periods will be off or they may have bladder dysfunction, they have urgency and have to go all the time. Dave Asprey: Do mold toxins cause SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome? William Rea, M.D.: I don't really know but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Dave Asprey: What does mold specifically do to your brain? William Rea, M.D.: You're asking for a whole lecture on that because, you see, molds can go right up the nose and right into your brain and that could cause short term memory loss. That can cause anxiety. It can cause fatigue. It can cause cognitive dysfunction where you just can't remember and you can't put anything together so that you have a rational life. Imbalance is one of the other big things. We'll see that mold will hit the balance mechanism and people can't, they'll stagger just like they're being drunk, and of course we know that alcohol is partially due to mold, isn't? You can have a lot of things like that. Dave Asprey: What do mold toxins do to our visual system? William Rea, M.D.: Sometimes people who have mold toxins that affect their optic nerves or their eyes. These type of people can have blurry vision or their distance vision or near vision will get off. I've also seen somewhere they have changed in color, they'll see color distortions, and I'm sure there are other things that there are. Dave Asprey: What does mold do to sleep? 4

5 William Rea, M.D.: What does mold do to sleep? I can tell you right now it's one of two ways. One, you get a real disturbed sleep and you can't sleep, and apparently it screws up the melatonin, which is a sleep hormone, and on the other hand you may have these people who just sleep, sleep, sleep. I've had patients tell me, "Doc, I can sleep 24 hours a day, you know," and then you get them detoxified, demolded and then they're fine with that. It's either way. Dave Asprey: Does a mold exposure make people fat? William Rea, M.D.: I think mold exposure does make people fat, some people. Other people, lose their tolerance for food and they lose weight of course, but there's more obesity in society today than there ever has been. I think part of that is due to the chemical or the mold toxin like the Trichothecenes or Ochratoxins, or some of those because that's a classical chemical response that a lot of people have to toxic chemicals. Dave Asprey: Are most people unaware that they're exposing themselves to these obesogens, these toxins that can make them fat? William Rea, M.D.: The question is, are most people aware? Obviously they are in society because we have a massive gain increase in obesity and I would think that if people were aware of that then they might look in to mold sensitivities and mold poisoning more. Dave Asprey: There are people who are diagnosed with CFS and fibromyalgia and some percentages of them actually have mold toxicity. I'm looking for just an estimate of how much CFS and fibromyalgia. William Rea, M.D.: Of course CFS and fibromyalgia, what percentage of those people are there? It's hard to say because it's a chemical problem, also in a lot of people and it might be that molds are 50%, the chemicals are 25% or vice versa. It's very difficult to tell on that, but clearly a high percentage. You got to remember this is how nature rots. We don't think of it that way sometimes, but it is. That's how they break down themselves. Any people I've seen gangrene caused by being a vascular surgeon. It's something that's a very important thing to realize. 5

6 Dave Asprey: Do mold toxins trigger chemical sensitivities? William Rea, M.D.: Mold toxins can cause chemical sensitivity and vice versa. Dave Asprey: Is there a connection between Lyme disease and mold toxins in your clinical experience? William Rea, M.D.: In my experience there is, and again that's because the Lyme disease presses the, or suppresses the immune system and you can get the molds moving in or vice versa. We have hundreds of patients who are sent to use who've had already been treated for Lyme disease and like many months of intravenous antibiotics and yet when you look at their immune system and you test them for molds they may have severe mold sensitivity. Dave Asprey: We know that chemicals can contribute to birth and autism, do mold toxins also contribute to birth defects and autism? William Rea, M.D.: The question is, do mold toxins convert or cause congenital defects and the like? I think so, and I think there is a lot of animal literature that shows that. Let's face it who has their nose in the mold more than the animals and that's probably nature's way of getting rid of defective organs... defective infants. Dave Asprey: What's your treatment protocol for patients who come in with mold illness? William Rea, M.D.: Our treatment protocol is very simple or very complicated, it depends on how the patient, how poisoned the patient is or how sensitive the patient is. First and obviously as I said before history, physical exam, laboratory tests to find out what their immune system looks like, then provocation of the molds and then treatment with the injections of the mold. Then, also if they have mycotoxins or mold toxins in them we would then go ahead and give them sauna if they can tolerate it, and we would give them high nutrients like vitamin C, glutathione, multi-minerals, multi-vitamins, and a lot of patients need oxygen therapy because their microvessels have shut down and they don't extract the oxygen 6

7 and so that we might do. Also, our protocol would be if they have immune defects like gamma globulin or T cells we would give them boosters for all those things. Dave Asprey: Is changing diet a part of treatment? William Rea, M.D.: Yes, that's the other factor, of course. You see mold sensitivity and mold toxin can disrupt your immune system so that you can't tolerate foods, and a lot of the food sensitivities will spread. I've seen patients with mold toxins they come in who had no safe foods, every time they ate they get sick, and if you don't treat them with food injections and organic food, rotary diet, safe water, less polluted water, then you may not be successful in treating them. Dave Asprey: How important is it that someone's who's lived in a moldy environment get rid of all of their porous belongings? William Rea, M.D.: It's very important to get rid of the belongings or sometimes you can salvage a few clothes if you wore some six times with the different furniture and everything, unless it's hard you can't detox it. We've had some we do mold cultures in old place before and after, and sometimes you can get the house cleaned for mold and it's still toxic. I think it's probably due to the mycotoxins that are in the cracks and everything that can't be eliminated. There are some houses that are non-salvageable, the majority of them are. Dave Asprey: Do biofeedback and neurofeedback have any usefulness in treating mold? William Rea, M.D.: Biofeedback and what was the other one? Dave Asprey: Neurofeedback. William Rea, M.D.: Neurofeedback, I'm not sure I know the difference between the two but... Dave Asprey: That's cool. One has sensors other than EEG, one is EEG. 7

8 William Rea, M.D.: But it may help the autonomic nervous system a little bit, but if you don't unpoison the patient and desensitize the patient it doesn't work then. Dave Asprey: Is Prozac an appropriate treatment for mold illness patients? William Rea, M.D.: I don't think I've ever given a patient Prozac for a mold illness and I don't think it is appropriate to use. Now, there are some people who need to be calmed down and I wouldn t object to a temporary substance like Prozac for a couple of weeks or a month, something like that, but I wouldn t I would delude myself to thinking it was going to help them get cleared up. Dave Asprey: I'm glad you said that. Can people fully recover from mold illness? William Rea, M.D.: People can recover from mold illness. Yes, we have hundreds, thousands of them that get recovered, have recovered. Dave Asprey: Is age a factor in whether or not you can recover? William Rea, M.D.: Age actually may have something to do with mold recovery because if you had a lifelong damage of your autonomic nervous system, your immune system, your enzyme detoxification systems, it maybe a little more difficult. On the other hand, some people who are extremely healthy even though they're old or very young and they can recover faster, it's either way. Dave Asprey: If you had to choose between having a patient live in a building with asbestos and lead paint or mold toxins, which would you choose? William Rea, M.D.: If I had to choose between patient with asbestos and lead paint, and mold toxins, probably I would choose the asbestos. However, one can be just as bad as another, I wouldn't choose for either one. I might say, "Blow up that building." Dave Asprey: Good answer. How important are mold toxins in food? William Rea, M.D.: Mold toxins in food could be very important because let's face it it's like a pesticide in food, very toxic. Mold toxins are very toxic in food also. 8

9 Dave Asprey: What are some of the foods that are highest in mycotoxins? William Rea, M.D.: I think some of the foods that are highest in mycotoxin are most likely wines and fermented kind of stuff, and then if it wasn't that, then probably some of the yeast containing foods or mushrooms may be similar, they have their own mycotoxins, and so on down the line. Dave Asprey: Can you cook the mold out of your food? William Rea, M.D.: We might be able to cook some mold out of the food, but because most foods has a little bit of mold in it, but on the other hand I don't want to try to cook because some of them are very toxic it's better not to eat those. Dave Asprey: The U.S. has lower standards for mold toxins in food compared to many other countries, do you think this is a problem? William Rea, M.D.: Other countries may have, I guess we could say higher standards than America, on the other hand we don't know whether they enforce it or not. The other thing is, is that we really don't know what is good for one person versus another as far as levels go because unless it's an overt poisoning you got your biochemical individuality. I don't think you really know. I'm not very savvy on government regulations and I'm not very keen on it because Dave Asprey: They don't do much. William Rea, M.D.: Right. That's right. Dave Asprey: What I found from my work with coffee which is a high mold food and mine s not, is that the US doesn't have any standards for coffee mold and most other countries do. The worst coffee naturally gravitates to the US because it's legal to buy there. Isn't the problem of mold in our environment getting worst now compared to 30 or 50 years ago? William Rea, M.D.: I think the problem of mold in the environment has been, number one, it's being recognized more but also since we're becoming an older building type of 9

10 people, in both United States and Canada we've noticed that the older buildings leak more and have more problems, it probably is becoming more of a problem but I think the big problem has been recognition. Dave Asprey: Has the mold biome of the soil and of the planet changed to become more toxic? William Rea, M.D.: The natural substances of the earth may be more toxic. It's sure toxic from the fact that you've got herbicides and pesticides and that can destroy the worms and the different things that make-up good earth, and then molds can cause it too. I'm not sure about that, you'll have to ask an agriculture guy on that, but it probably is. Dave Asprey: How many doctors today are treating mold illness? William Rea, M.D.: There are many doctors treating mold illness today. I would suspect there at least 3,000 to 4,000 in America, and then we've got people all over the earth. The Mexicans, we have a big society down in Mexico who treats them. We have one in Japan. We have one in China, Europe, England, they're quite a few people that are treating molds and mold toxins now. Dave Asprey: Why does the traditional Western medicine side of things not recognized that there are these many people working with mold toxins now? Why is it kind of underground stuff? William Rea, M.D.: I'm not sure it is underground, that's the point and I can't speak for society, in medical society because some of our colleagues don't want to hear anything and some do. We always talk for the ones that want to hear it because the of the fact that it's so crucial. We have, for example in the ear, nose, and throat specialty has always recognized mold problems and I've taught them, and they actually had a society for this Otolaryngic Allergy Society, and that court not been totally excluded from American medicine but it's obviously not as well recognized as it should be in my opinion. 10

11 Dave Asprey: Would you be willing to guess the number of homes out there that likely have mold problems? William Rea, M.D.: For me to guess the amount of homes that have mold problems, I don't have any idea because I do know this, certain areas tend to have it, low-lying areas like you got down here in East Texas and Louisiana where there's really a very moist and humid, and Florida, and most coasts. I would bet British Columbia has a lot of that problem because of the... and then you've got all the great lakes in the river valleys where mold grows completely. It could be a very significant part of the population. Dave Asprey: Do people with mold problems need to move away from moist areas? William Rea, M.D.: Some people with mold problems have to move away from moist areas. Others if you can get them cleaned up, get their houses cleaned up, get them desensitized, don't need to. Dave Asprey: What other questions should I be asking you? William Rea, M.D.: I don't know. It seemed like you covered the whole textbook of medicine. Why don't you ask me about total load and I'll explain that ok because do they synergist with other chemicals. Dave Asprey: Great idea. William Rea, M.D.: The molds are part of the total environmental load and if you picture yourself as a barrel, and everybody's got a different size barrel, molds, pesticides, solvents, bacteria, viruses, all fill that barrel. Then the mold gets access from your house or your office or your work, it may spill over and then you started getting symptoms, screw up your immune system and your enzyme detoxification systems, and then cause illness or dysfunction. There's a lot of synergistic effect from molds and other chemicals. Let's face it, the toxins in molds are very toxic chemicals. Why wouldn't they detoxify in the same pathways as other toxins? 11

12 Dave Asprey: I'm glad you brought that up, that's a really helpful one, to talk about the total load. A lot of the things I write are about that. It doesn't matter what the actual source was you want to be able to eliminate but if you have a bunch of stuff knocking you over you're probably not going to feel very good. William Rea, M.D.: You got it. Dave Asprey: Can you describe how you designed the Environmental Health Center? William Rea, M.D.: I designed the Environmental Health Center on a surgical principle that if you have a dirty wound you don't sew it up until you've got it cleaned, and if you want to prevent recurrent infections then, or recurrent anything, that you have to get the fluid and low it down, basic surgical premise. What we did is took the Environmental Health Center and of course this evolved over a period of time with many, many experiments in how to reduce the total environmental load. What we came up with was number one, is that you have to have certain materials that don't out gas or fume or get off particulates. You would likely get those reduced at least five times over a normal environment, which we do. Then we have airlocks and maybe you shouldn't save it, a lot of these materials are usually stones, ceramics, enamel, porcelain, steel metal with porcelain fused with 2,000 degrees, 1,200 degrees doesn t quite work. Then you have to have a series of airlocks so when you walk in the clinic you will have a buffer so that a lot of pollutants will just drop to the floor before you go to the second door. These are small airlocks but they're enough to be successful by measurement. You're having materials that had very little to no outgassing, very little to no particulate, and then we don't allow any perfumes or any insecticides or any solvents for cleaning or anything in there. I must say it looks pretty clean yet after 30 years. Apparently good soap and elbow grease does work. Then we have hard chairs like you see around here, hardwood or ceramic or chromium, the materials are relatively benign also. 12

13 Then we have air filter, elaborate air filter system in which there's a series of particulate charcoal and even ceramic filtration so that you can trap many of the chemicals that are in there. The idea is try not to put many chemicals or particulates, or even electromagnetic radiation into the most sophisticated part of the clinic. Then take out the rest with your filtration, so you have relatively pure air. Our big fight all the time is to keep people from bringing it in because some patients do off-gas, some of them have mold on them. They smell of mold, they have... some of them have pesticides on them, some of them have solvents on them, and you have to try to control that so that your filters can take that out and not overload your environment. We have a lot of patients who, that's all we do is have them live in a controlled environment and they get well. Now, of course you have to give nutrition and everything also. The walls are metal and porcelain and that's what sand is fused on steel at 2,000 degrees and that makes them rather solid, so that you don't have fumes from the paint, and you don't have a chipping off of particles. We also have, not quite as sophisticated as the prime side that I've described but we have hard floors made out of vinyl asbestos that don't chip. We have exercise equipment that have been degreased so that they don't put the fumes out from this exercise bicycles and treadmills, so on. Then we have three saunas which two are ceramic, total ceramic and non-outgassing glue or as you put it with plaster of Paris basically is what it is, and then one of glass and hardwood. You can't use saunas that are cedar or pine because of the serpent odors and they will have problems with those. Then we also have developed a modified technique for oxygen therapy where there's a reservoir made out of cellophane not plastic and ceramic mask or aluminum mask rather than the vinyl mask, and then they can do their oxygen therapy for two hours a day if they needed. We do... You saw a picture out here in the lobby of Dr. Griffith's who s our mycologist and unfortunately he just died this last year and we try to get antigens for the molds that are powdered and then we constrict our own or construct our on antigens that are non-toxic and don't have preservatives or additives in. Dave Asprey: Tell me about a memorable patient, someone who really taught you 13

14 something. William Rea, M.D.: Of course being a cardio vascular man I've seen patients who get heart irregularities from this, and what they would get is also spontaneous bruises and they would look down and then like there's a bruise. Next thing they do they get these real tiny red spots that are called petechiae and then they get vascular spasm, they'll have blue hands, blue feet, cold hands, cold feet, sometimes their nose is blue and cold and they get acne of all things. These people can have very severe problems. We've had people who had problems with extracting oxygen and be what we call lack of oxygen, hypoxic and not function well until they get it out. I remember one patient came in, he was going on 20% of oxygen and I'll tell you what, he wasn't functioning very well. We had to give him oxygen right away to start to counteract that, and that was because his small blood vessels were spasms. It wasn't because it wasn't crossing the lungs, the oxygen was crossing the lungs and he was pink. The problem was it was also circulating through his tissue and not being extracted and so he couldn't function. You understand if that circulating only 20% of the oxygen being taken out of the brain, you're not going to be able to think too well. Dave Asprey: What do mycotoxins do to your mitochondria? William Rea, M.D.: What mycotoxins can do to mitochondria seems to be that the mitochondria respond very poorly to any type of toxin. If it's a pesticide or solvent or whatever, and it's also the mitochondria's part of the innate immune system, it might be the first thing it hit because they were trying to detoxify it. We've seen that happen and when this happens people get weak and fatigued, they can hardly function from that. That seems to be one of the prime problems of people who have mycotoxicosis. Dave Asprey: How does your treatment of mold illness differ from other protocols? William Rea, M.D.: Our treatment for mold probably doesn't differ too much with the exception that people, a lot of people won't immunize for it which I think is very important. Most people won't correct their T cells or the gamma globulins which we always do. Most people, well some people won't even give nutrition for it too, it's very, very important to do it I think. 14

15 We use diet also, organic food and safe water, less polluted water that a lot of people don't seem to do also, and we'll give the oxygen therapy, and of course we've got the less polluted environments. If a patient can't go back home they may stay in our less polluted environment for a month or two until their home gets fixed. I would say that's how we differ quite a bit. 15