MOLD UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

11/15/19

I see Dr. Michael Gray as a hippie environmentalist doing what he likes to do. He holds command of Mold Mycotoxicosis: Immunological Changes in Humans with emphatic cadence on the contaminated front. The following appointment on August 7 & 8, 2019, in Benson, Arizona, was recorded with permission, transcribed and is a beginning orientation to a 21st century paradigm shift. May this help us understand the times in which we live and to recognize that the ancient things written back then are for our admonition today.

— Stacy Sweeney,RN

SCHWANN CELLS

Dr. Gray: The Schwann cells, a peripheral nerve, normally produces nothing but myelin, and then it wraps its body around neighboring fibers from all these nerves, and that is the myelin sheath. It was unraveling and the cell was dying. There were no white cells. The only explanation for that is there was a a poison.

Stacy: It’s not autoimmune!

NOT AUTOIMMUNE

Dr. Gray: Not autoimmune! Okay. So this to me is highly significant. I talked to XXXXXX XXXXXXXX, who is the leading researcher at the XXXXXXX XXXXXX XX XXXXX  about a year ago, about a different problem, and at the end of the conversation I asked him, “By the way, XXXXXX, what do you make of the issue of toxins and MS (Multiple Sclerosis) ?” He said, “Oh, there’s nothing to it.” And he laughed at me and he hung up. And that’s kinda the currency we are getting from the neurology team. They’re not paying attention. This is paradigm shifting. This changes our understanding of the disease. I do operate from that perspective. I believe MS is a disease of Hyper-Toxicity: exposures, accumulation of poisons, and then they’re damaging the myelin by killing the Schwann cells that make the myelin.

Agent Orange

Dr. Gray: Now I still believe that that is the case, and I’m frustrated when people don’t pay attention. So again, I don’t understand why there is such resistance. Certainly Parkinson’s is another neurological degenerative disease caused by poisons as well. There is good epidemiological data on Parkinson’s that links it to Agent Orange and multiple pesticides, and I have a fairly substantial number of Parkinson’s patients who develop their disease after spending time in water damaged buildings, too. So, to put it in perspective, the CDC (Center of Disease Control) and other governmental agencies are now telling us that 50% of the built structures in this nation are damaged by water and have mold.

Stacy: 50%?!

Mold Dogs

Dr. Gray: So, one of the things I think might be of value is if you would consider getting a service dog. It can be a Chihuahua.

Stacy: Lol

Dr. Gray: They have 40,000 times greater sense of smell than we do and they can learn to recognize when they’re going into a contaminated building. They can detect the odor of mold, and they can signal you, and warn you and keep you out. Something to think about. I do have a number of patients that do have mold dogs. You should not do the training yourself because you would be exposed to mold. I saw in 2003 a demonstration from a policeman in the LAPD (Las Angeles Police Department) showing his mold dog. He trained a big German Shepherd to detect the smell of mold and he shows a 200 foot long hedgerow and he went with a rag that had mold on it. He reached into the middle of the hedgerow and wiped one leaf with it. The dog was let go at one end and bounded down the whole hedgerow and stopped right at the mold. So, we know this can work.

A Far Off Hope

Dr. Gray: So just the beginning bit of an orientation. I see MS as a disease of hypertoxicity. I believe we can help you stabilize and stop the progression if we can help you get the poisons, that I suspect we’re going to find, out of your system. What I propose to do is to give you a set of lab orders. It’s a hefty blood draw. They’re going to take 12 to 15 tubes, 150ccs, if you were donating blood it would be 500 ccs. so it’s not huge but it’s more than average.

HLA Markers

Dr. Gray: There is one test that is going to look at cellular genetic markers that are referred to as HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) markers. Which mean we’re looking at the receptors on the surface of the white cell. Every cell in your body has a big array of receptors that is their intro to the world. If you had a condition where your kidneys were shot and you wanted your husband to give you a kidney, what has to exist between the two of you?

Stacy: HLA matching antigens

Dr. Gray: That’s correct. That’s what triggers the immune response into activity. If it sees protein structures that are not self then it’s hyper. It destroys them, which could mean taking the organ out.

As we started to collect data on HLA markers in the 60’s when the Cleveland Clinic started doing kidney transplants, it became apparent that there were certain sets of these receptors that were always present in certain illnesses. So, if you had the receptors that matched the illness, it did not mean you had the illness, but that you had a greater susceptibility.

So, a colleague of mine in the 90s, Ritchie Shoemaker, back in Maryland, who is no longer practicing, who also got focused on water damaged buildings in the early 2000’s, collected HLA data on every single one of his patients. By 2007, when I met him in his office, he had a database of 10,000 patients. We used his data to tell us who is susceptible to holding onto toxins.

THE HLA ROSETTA STONE

Dr. Gray: There are two broad categories. One category is missing perhaps one or two of the detoxification enzyme arrays, and the other category are missing multiple segments of the detoxification enzyme arrays. Therefore, we refer to them as multi susceptible and mono susceptible for a particular problem. I think I can find that and show it to you quickly. So, this is the actual so-called HLA Rosetta Stone.

Post Lyme Syndrome

Dr. Gray: You can see that there are five different pedigrees that are multi susceptible, four associated with just being susceptible to poisons in water damaged buildings, and there are two that are susceptible to the post Lyme syndrome where you get ill after treatment and stay symptomatic because you are holding on to poisons that Lyme can leak into your body and you can’t get rid of.

Turquoise Tide

Dr. Gray: Then there were Dinoflagellates dystheria caused by turquoise tide in Pocomo and Chesapeake Bay in the mid 90s. Shoemaker was involved in studying that and showed that the agricultural runoff caused a bloom in the organisms (toxic algae) at the bottom of the ocean which came to the surface. As it came up, there were massive fish kills, skin diseases and they were neurologically affected.

The Ripple Effects

Dr. Gray: People who were in the water or just walking down the beach when the surf was up and got exposed to the mist, broke out in rashes and in a few hours they could not find their cars, they might not know their names, or how to get home. They were basically intoxicated with dystheria poison. And again, as with Lyme, he observed that 24% of the population could not self-heal. Everybody else would go out of the exposure and gradually improve. But this group would not self-heal and because of the genetics and the way this works out, I now know that this is because it correlates to the missing detox antibodies.
(Note: Antibodies and Enzymes are both proteins. But enzymes are defined by being able to catalyze a reaction. Antibodies bind to a specific antigen, and thereby target whatever contains that antigen (a virus, bacteria, allergen, poison etc.) for the immune system to engage. Abzymes are molecules that have both functionalities.)

Detox Array

Dr. Gray: The detox array is almost 200,000 enzymes that every cell in your body is supposed to be able to make on demand. The cell only makes them when the poison is in their environments. But not everybody gets all of them and across the world there is this 24% set of people who are missing the enzymes, and they accumulate the toxins. The fact of not being able to make them is not so uncommon. The fact that there are poisons in our environment is driven home when we look at the data published now of cord blood samples of infants.

Cord Blood is Hard to Break

Dr. Gray: Infants in the United States average 287 poisons at birth in their cord blood. Which means it’s in the mom, and from the mom it came from the general environment. We’re in a pretty dismal situation. I’m not trying to paint a totally bleak picture because I will teach you how to get the poisons out of your system. We know how to do that. Talk to me 20 years ago and I wouldn’t have known. But over the years I’ve worked on this whole issue and problem and I have proven that we can do it and we can succeed. So, again, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the videos that I have out online (My CYP450). Have you seen the woman with psoriasis? She tells the story better than anybody else.

Stacy: I want to tell the story better than anybody else.

Psoriasis

Dr. Gray: Okay. It’s an important instructive lesson. She took clay for three years and it didn’t do anything for her. Not until she started to take it twice a day (every 12 hours) that it worked. And then within weeks her condition on her skin, which had dogged her for 42 years literally resolved. When she stopped doing the clay 14 months later, it all came back. And the reason it came back is because you store the poisons in your cells, in your fat and possibly in your bones.

CATCHER’S MITT

Dr. Gray: If you don’t have a catcher’s mitt cleaning the fluids of your body, mainly clay or charcoal, if you don’t have something catching the toxins as the fluids are moving through the gut and cleaning it out, then of course they come out of the cells and the levels in the fluids rise and the immune system is activated again. It’s relatively quick and easy to clean the fluids and get the immune system to quieten down and slow down the inflammation. It’s a long-term process to get it out of your cells. That’s what takes 6 years. But it works! And yeah, it will work for anybody.

Stacy: I ßelieve you and put my confidence in you.

Follow Up

Dr. Gray: I usually see patients after they start the protocol in one month. I can certainly see you again every three months. Audit your blood tomorrow before you start the treatment protocol and again 2 weeks before you come back in three months. The problems are pretty minimal as long as you are doing it as you are directed.

THE MOLD QUARTET

Stacy: Where can I find published data on mold and its effects on the human body?

Dr. Gray: I can give you four right now that I refer to as the mold quartet, published 15 years ago, in the “International Archives of Environmental Health.” There have been several publications since then, but I think these four are probably the most important. There are four papers. I will print them for you now. I’m co-author on three of them, and I’m lead author on one of them that deals with immunological changes.

The first one deals with the issues of the immune system, “Mixed Mold Mycotoxicosis: Immunological Changes in Humans Following Exposure to Water Damaged Buildings.” The second one by Crago talks about “Physiological, Neurophysiological, and Electrocortical Effects of Mixed Mold Exposure,” and it’s important. It gives the data on 10 parameters in the IQ test that declined correlated to the duration and intensity of the exposure. There is also one table that talks about the QEEG (Quotient electroencephalogram) and the abnormalities seen. There were abnormalities in both.

The third paper by Campbell, “Neural Autoantibodies and Neurophysiological Abnormalities in Patients Exposed to Molds in Water Damaged Buildings,”
talks about demyelinating peripheral neuropathy. It was present in about one-tenth of a cohort of about 1,000 people that he had seen by that time. That already links that the toxins were demyelinating the peripheral nerves. And the final one by Vojdani looks at “Antibodies to Molds and Satratoxin in Individuals Exposed in Water Damaged Buildings.” These are good papers, all peer reviewed, and I think that gives you a good start.

Lyme

Stacy: I had a dream that a doctor told me my MS was linked to Lyme.

Dr. Gray: What was what?? Lyme toxins can cause problems, but I haven’t heard of a link to MS specifically, but it doesn’t mean it may not be there. Richard Horwitz, PhD, is the guy, the world’s leading expert on Lyme. We both spoke at a meeting in the beginning of May, in Scottsdale, sponsored by the International Society for Environmentally Acquired Illnesses. He would be a good place to go. He’s well published, he’s active in research, he cranks them out. I think he would give you the insight on Lyme. We don’t have Lyme in this area. There are ticks, but they don’t have Lyme. It’s not endemic in this area. It’s in the eastern and northern states illness. I tested for it in every patient over the years and have had two cases in 33 years. They were both from outside the area.

Neurodegenerative

Dr. Gray: I believe all neurodegenerative diseases are linkable to toxic exposures. Of the 287 toxins in cord blood, 215 are neurotoxic, 205 are carcinogens, and 189 cause birth defects. Obviously, some cause all three. It doesn’t mean that every child is going to have the disease but it sure as hell means that that would be the most likely cause of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder,) ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder,) and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Also linked to dementia in the older population, and Toxic Encephalopathy in the younger population. Some of the illnesses will resolve to an illness we can recognize like MS, but Parkinson’s and ALS are also diseases of toxicity.

Epigenetic Phenomenon

Dr. Gray: There is an epigenetic phenomenon. If you don’t have the enzyme, you’re in more trouble than if you did. Everybody is going to be sick if they are in a dampened environment for any length of time. But, of the population, 75% will self-heal.

Stacy: Have you thought of making the enzymes?

Dr. Gray: You can’t make the enzyme. We can make enzymes do a lot of things, and we can take digestive enzymes. but you can’t make the enzymes that are made by the cells. That’s the deficiency. And we can’t get them in you because they will be destroyed by the digestive enzymes. I don’t know what they all are (The detox array is almost 200,000 enzymes that every cell in your body is supposed to be able to make on demand) I do have a belief that there is another explanation that maybe could lead us to a cure.

A NEW AGENT, A NEW ENTITY, CRISPRS

Dr. Gray: Let’s suppose you’re not missing the enzyme or the gene. Let’s suppose you are making defective enzymes. If that’s the case, then there is a new agent, a new entity, called, CRISPRS (clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.) CRISPRS are protein and/or DNA bits that are made by bacteria to protect themselves against viruses. Viruses attack bacteria and bacteria have defenses. And one of those defenses are CRISPRS, which repair the damage to the DNA that the virus is doing. There are now 6,000 labs around the country doing research on CRISPRS. One of the projects was looking at mice that had a congenital form of blindness, Retinitis Pigmentosa. So, they took these mice that had this disease, and they injected one dose of CRISPRS into the eyes of the mice. In three months, they were beginning to see. DNA repair is possible with CRISPRS. If by chance you do have the enzyme and they are defective, then we can do something long-term. Let’s start with just getting the poisons out of your system. Fortunately, we know how to do that!

Glutathione

Dr. Gray: The last supplement on the protocol is Glutathione. When I see you back in November, and we see your numbers, we can add Glutathione to the regimen. And there’s no question that it can help. It’s a powerful antioxidant, but it is also a mini peptide shuttle detox agent. It causes the cells to dump the toxins. If you have established equilibrium, it will raise the toxin levels in your fluids. Toxins are in your cells, every one of them, and every cell in the body makes glutathione. It’s an intracellular antioxidant and it’s the primary defense peptide. So I don’t use it in the beginning.

Disease History

Dr Gray: When were you diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis?
Stacy: 1989
Dr Gray: What was your first episode?
Stacy: A violent attack of total paralysis.
Dr Gray: Frightening.
Dr Gray: Do you have vertigo
Stacy: Yes. I’m Spacey.
Dr Gray: How is your vision?
Stacy: Blurry. I see showers of light.
Dr Gray: How often?
Stacy: Twice a week.
Dr Gray: Is it colored or just light?
Stacy: Light.
Dr Gray: Do you have hearing loss?
Stacy: Right ear.
Dr Gray: Headaches?
Stacy: Yes, but it’s related to something else.
Dr Gray: Okay. What is it related to?
Stacy: I do Cranio-Sacral Therapy and Spinal Decompression. I was taught how to do the treatment in 2009 by a wholistic doctor.
Dr Gray: It’s great that you know how to do that. What kind of work do you do?
Stacy: I’m a Registered Nurse. Will my reasoning return?

Kilbourne Neuro Test System

Dr. Gray: My experience with the cognitive issues, for many years, I did an extensive battery test of neuro-psych questions. I used one referred to as the Kilborn Neuro Test System. Kent Kilbourne was the chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Southern Cal for 30 years. Before that, for six years, he chaired the Pulmonary Department at Duke. In the 60’s he was a Cardiologist; a very well-rounded clinician. He reasoned that global neurotoxins would affect the brain globally. So, if you ask a series of test questions that require a lot of gray matter (one of the most complicated and mysterious areas of the body) to perform, you should be able to see the abnormalities. So, he had a 23 battery test, and he went to five EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Clean Communities to test the test. What he observed was that these communities of randomly selected patients, 1/3 did perfect scores, 1/3 failed 1 test and 1/3 failed 2 test, but no one had more than two failing points. Our water damaged patients who were ill averaged 9.5 failing points.

Stacy: A scientific way of saying we’re stupid. So, when do we know we’re incompetent?

Dr. Gray: If all did the treatment protocol, which granted have been refined over the years, within two 1/2 to three years, almost all of them are back to baseline. That’s what you can expect. You need to be patient. The only tricky part is you have to space the sequestrants from all other meds by 90 minutes. If you don’t, then it will absorb everything you’re trying to take. Inflammatory symptoms will resolve first. It just takes time. I believe that what we’ll see in your lab work is a combination of immune, neurological and endocrine abnormalities. You’ll be fine.

Consumer Reports

Dr. Gray: Six of the supplements on the protocol are available at Costco. Consumer Reports tells us that Costco is the best in the country. If they carry it, it’s the best. There was a study done where the reporter went to three national chains, bought multiple herbal products and sent them to an analytical lab. Not one box had anything in it. That’s the environment we live in. I trust consumer reports. I think they are a good independent entity. They’ve never been questioned or challenged.

Fish Oil

Dr. Gray: Costco’s fish oil is distilled and filtered. You never want to eat cod/carp fish. They are fed feed stabilized by a toxic product by Monsanto. They are raised in most of these fish farms in oceans. They may have football field size nets that they are confined in. There can be billions of fish and they literally poor gallons and gallons of pesticides over them, antifungals, and who knows what else. There’s no way they can not be toxic. In Europe, at all the fish stores, they post signs, “Do not eat if you’re pregnant.” I’m not pregnant and I’m not eating fish.

Stacy: I take Hemp (seed) Oil. It has a perfect blend of Omega 3-6-9. It’s a superfood.

Elavil

Dr. Gray: Are you taking Elavil?
Stacy: Yes.
Dr. Gray: Amitriptyline?
Stacy: Yes, for pain. I relate all my emotions to medications.
Dr. Gray: Elavil is toxic! It’s toxic in several ways! There’s been a research article in the Journal of American Medical Association, three weeks ago, summarizing the study done in England of 289.000 patients who entered the study between the ages of 55 and 65. It looked at the status after a decade of taking antipsychotics, antidepressants, anticholinergics, and anti-spasmodics. There were 20,000 excess cases of dementia. Antidepressants were the worst. I understand you have pain from spasticity and you want to try to control it.

CBD Oil

Dr. Gray: I would encourage you to try the CBD oil and see how that works for you. It is a pain reliever, anti-anxiety agent, mood elevator, and it has no toxicity. It may help with cognition, inflammation and pain. I believe you can swap out Elavil for CBD oil. Cannabidiol is a powerful antioxidant. Every batch of CBD Oil they make is tested by an independent lab for toxins and for concentrations. We make it available to our patients at cost. We have 2 mg/gtt/5ml for $20 and 4mg/gtt/5ml for $40 and 60mg/gtt/5ml for $60. Charlotte’s Web is the supplier and is most reliable. It does not have THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol.) It does not get you high. It is not addictive. It’s not addictive.

Duke it Out

Dr. Gray: I’m giving you two copies of the protocol. I want you to keep one at home, and take one to any appointment, to any doctors you go to. If anybody tells you not to do anything on that list, have them call me and we’ll duke it out. We’ll figure it out. The most popular thing they want you to stop is the charcoal.. They say, “That’s too much, you’re going to strip her nutrients.” We are supplementing you with twice a day vitamins and I monitor liver, kidney, chemistry and blood counts every 3 months. I’ve never had a patient have an issue or an adverse effect using sequestrants.

Stacy: I either detox or I don’t. It has been so nice to sit with you for an hour and record so I can really comprehend. The combination of hearing, writing and seeing the words work well for me.

Stacy Sweeney, RN