So you breathe that in, or you can even absorb it through your

skin if you touch it. So those go into your

system, into your bloodstream. They're really small,

so they can cross the capillary

wall. They can get into the brain through the blood brain barrier, which

normally keeps out things that are too big.

So when that happens, it sets off

a line of inflammation from

cytokine production. And cytokines are, they're proteins that

affect inflammation and affect the immune system and. Things

welcome to open heart surgery with Boots, a

podcast for heart patients by me, a heart

patient. Join me as I take you on a journey through the

intricacies of the human heart, revealing the

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Be sure you hit subscribe and also

leave a review. That means the world to

me, and I read every single one. Also, if you

have a story to share or want to hear something that I haven't

covered on this program, you can send me an email which is

linked in the show notes. But without further delay, let's

get to this week's episode. Welcome to

another episode of Open Heart Surgery with Boots. I am your

host, Boots Knighton, coming at

you from Victor, Idaho, your fellow heart buddy.

Thanks for coming along with me today. If you're just finding this

podcast, I am so glad that you have. If you are

looking to support this podcast, please consider

joining our Patreon community. I've named it the joyful

beat. We are just getting going and we are going to

start meeting on Zoom, and I'm building a community of heart

patients there around the world who are looking

for a little bit more support than maybe what you might be getting at

home. So I'm recording this in September of

2024 with Doctor Robin Thompson,

who has been such a pivotal part of my

life for the past year. And doctor

Thompson lives up in Bozeman, Montana. That's where she

practices. And I have invited her on because this

is National Mold awareness

Month. Who knew there was such a thing? I think there's an

awareness month for just about everything out there. And

Doctor Thompson is a naturopath, a naturopathic

doctor who specializes in

biotoxin illness, amongst a variety of other things

as well. So, Doctor Thompson, thank you so much for

agreeing to step out of your out of the

doctor patient role with me today and being willing to come on

the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be

here. Love talking to you. So tell us about

your credentials. I mean, you help people with

so many different things. It's just fascinating what you do in your

practice every day with Mads, your nurse, and

Ashlyn, the office manager. You three are

a dynamic duo up there in Bozeman. I have

a great team, and I think sometimes people look

at my specialty areas and they think

that they're kind of, like, disparate. But there's a lot of

overlap. I do a lot of mental health stuff that overlaps

with maltex and illness and other biotechs and illnesses, the

cardiovascular stuff, obviously, there's a huge impact

there, but hormones and weight and all that

stuff, because biotoxin illness is a multi system,

multi symptom illness, and it can affect any part of the body. So

there are a lot of different things that I have to know

how to manage, I guess. Yeah. Which is fascinating to me,

because as a heart patient, and I hit my

head a few years prior to that, recently, I broke my leg,

and I have been in different

silos of the medical system and,

or should I say medical industry, even. And it's

so everyone is so pigeonholed into

their little areas, and so to meet you

and to see and witness everything you have to think

about when it comes to biotoxin illness, it

just is impressive to me, because, like, my

orthopedic surgeon, he was just like, I am just worried about your fibula and

tibia. And then my heart, my

cardiologist, I mean, the heart is really complex, and that is a lot to think

about. But, yeah, everyone's just. And then the neurologist is just thinking

about the brain and where you're like, I have to think about everything. It's

just amazing to me that you can do that with the grace

and the confidence and the knowledge that you. And

you're just so approachable, and there's no ego, and I just

really appreciate that. It's just a breath of fresh air.

Well, you know, being trained as a naturopathic physician, that's. That

is how we are trained. We are holistic. And yes, I have a

specialty area of biotechs and illness, but that

illness encompasses so many different body systems

and issues. And I don't pretend to be an

expert. I'm not a cardiologist. Right.

I refer out quite often for things, but I have to have a

basic understanding. I do have to treat a lot of GI things

and nutrient things that come up with. With this particular

set of situations with inflammation that

this causes. Right, right. Which is a great segue

into how I found you, because

I was. After I had my heart surgery,

my mom died nine weeks later, and then I had to clean her

house out. Twelve weeks post open heart surgery by

myself. My husband wasn't able to help. And that's okay. I have no

siblings, but, you know, I was, like, in it, in her house.

And unknowingly, I was

exposed to a variety of things in her house. Chemicals,

mold, all the things. And I was in obviously, in a really vulnerable

state for the next year. I proceeded to gain

weight, started having. I was good as new. After

my congenital defect was fixed. Well,

almost as good as new. But then I started slipping

backwards, and my cardiologist was stumped.

She ran all kinds of tests. I ended up going down to University of Utah.

Had another heart cath. I mean, it was awful. And they were like, we don't

know what's wrong. So they sent me to the Mayo clinic. The Mayo

clinic, after nine days of tests, were like, we don't know what's

wrong. And then I find myself in the parking

lot at the local grocery store and run into a

friend who. Who had been working with you. And I told her

what was going on, and she said, this sounds a lot like

biotoxin. You should go talk to Doctor Robin Thompson.

And I had already done some tests with, like, a

local dietitian who discovered it had an insane

amount of inflammation. And I took that to my

cardiologist, and she was like, I don't know what any of this means.

My general practitioner didn't know what it meant. And

lo and behold, I landed in your office, you know, a

June ago, and that's where our journey

started. And I about pulled my hair out

prior to coming to see you, and no one ever thought,

you know, it could be biotoxin exposure. And I've

worked through that, that frustration.

So I'm. I can tell this story more calmly,

but since I've been working with you, it is amazing. Like, it's. It's

been a slog, because my inflammation markers were, which we'll talk about

in a second, were so insanely high. Like, I was really

achieving there. I would have done great on the sats, my

inflammation scores, but I. I

cannot believe how much better I feel cardiovascular

wise by just working on this inflammation. And

so I thought we could take this first part now that I've

given listeners a bit of a backstory there and just talk

about what we saw at the beginning

and how you just see people in general when they walk into your office.

With trends and how that shows up cardiovascularly, since this is a heart

podcast and then how we treated it.

But actually, before we do that, let me take a step back, Robin,

why should we care about biotoxin illness?

Well, I think we should care because a lot of people walk around with it

and don't realize they have it. Case in point, right?

So, you know, if you think about over 50% of

buildings are water damaged in the United States, just as

one type of biotoxin, there are other types of biotoxins that

also affect people. But we're talking about mold today, I think. So.

You know, if you think about the number of people that have

exposure to water damaged buildings, it's pretty much everybody at some

point or another. And then at least

25%, we actually think now it's

probably closer to 40% of people have a genetic issue

with tagging and removing little, tiny biotoxins. And so

if you can't get rid of them, if you breathe them in, in a water

damaged building, from a water damaged building, for example, you can't get

rid of them. They just circulate through your whole body and cause I

inflammation in different areas and cause a lot of issues, you

know, certainly cardiovascularly, but also with the kidney and with the

brain and with the lungs and, you know, all of,

all of the things. So, you know, it's a large number of people

that walk around with. If you just think about the number of

people that have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, there's probably

a large percentage of those people that have biotoxin

illness of some type or another, partly because

those symptoms are so broad. And usually with

chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, most of those people

also have some degree of GI issues and some degree of mental

health issues and some degree of, you know, other things that

once you have that multi system, multi symptom illness picture,

you, you know, you have to rule out biotoxin illness

because it's one of the only things that can cause that. It's not the

only thing, but it's more than we realize, most

likely. And if you have, especially with, you

know, the serious side, if you have some of

those manifestations, and everybody manifests differently, of course, but if you have

some of those manifestations, I mean, it can kill you. So, yeah, I think

we should care. Wow. I guess

big picture. I don't understand why.

Well, I mean, you and I have talked about it one on one, but just

having a more general conversation about it now. Why

is the medical industry

not cluing into this more, because it seems

like a five alarm fire to me.

Well, I mean, it's just not part of their curriculum yet,

you know, I mean, that's the main answer. There's not

really any pharmaceutical,

you know, special interest groups that are going to profit off of it

either. And as a matter of fact, it costs people

money, because when you're talking about illness, that's one thing, but when you're

talking about fixing buildings, that's a whole other ball of axe, and

kind of. Nobody wants to get involved in that. So I think there are

some political things going on. I also think it's just, you

know, the medical community, conventional medical community, is very slow,

very slow to learn new things and

become apprised of them. Lyme disease

is another, you know, facet of biotoxin

illness that really. I mean, we're still a long

way from having conventional medicine on board with that,

but it's a lot better than it was ten years ago. Ten years ago, I

was told, even at the Mayo Clinic, which the

Minnesota location of the hospital of that

is in a Lyme endemic area, and ten years ago, they were telling me that

Lyme disease didn't exist. So that's not the case now.

So I think it's just a matter of time for people to

become aware of the research. Europe, there's a ton

more acceptance of this issue, and tick

borne illness as well. They seem to be a little faster

to be able to grasp onto things than the United

States. Well, I'm thankful to you that you are

leading the charge. I mean, you're not. There's not

many doctors in the United States that are able to

treat patients like me with the level of care you're able to.

So I thank you. So now, drilling down

to me and how, when I walked into your

office, my inflammation markers were

impressive. I would love for you to walk us through,

like, what you look at, and you can use me as an example if

you want, or just stay general. But all the different types of inflammation markers

and what each of those, you give a great sheet explaining

what each of those are. It's like, such a great education on, like, how

all these different things that you measure are important in the body and what

it. What it does for the body, if it's, like, at the right levels.

So can you just briefly walk us through what you look for?

Yeah. So there are some kind of strange,

unfamiliar to most people, inflammatory markers that

we test. And if you think about. So what happens with biotoxin

illness is let's say you're in a water damaged

building. You either breathe in those chemicals

from components of mold and bacteria and

fungi and mouse droppings. I mean, it all kind of mixes together

and gets airborne. So you breathe that in, or you can even

absorb it through your skin if you touch it. So those go

into your system, into your bloodstream. They're really small,

so they can cross the capillary wall,

they can get into the brain through the blood brain barrier, which normally

keeps out things that are too big. So when that

happens, it sets off a

line of inflammation from cytokine production. And

cytokines are, they're proteins that affect inflammation,

can affect the immune system and things. So once those side, and I

think you came in with a cytokine test, even that was like eleven

out of 15 or something were like crazy high. And I don't

necessarily test those cytokines, but that gave me information that, yeah, there's

something going on that's in your cytokines. So we

tested a bunch of things. One of the things that was really elevated in

your case was something called matrix metalloproteinase nine,

which can be elevated post heart attack and

things like that, but is also elevated in biotoxin

illness. And it actually is a feed forward system. So

MMP nine can drive more

inflammation, and it can bind

to a substance called pai one, which

causes clot formation. So that's one of the ways

that end result long term. If something isn't

taken care of, it can result in a clot and possibly an Mi

or something like that. There are other things that

the immune system can be impacted by these cytokines too.

And sometimes autoimmune

things can be driven. There is a

substance called cardiolipin that you can develop antibodies

to with biotoxin illness, and that also

can drive some clotting formation. Many other

things. Sometimes those cytokines will

impact other inflammatory markers that we tested. In

your case, youre TGF beta one is

another marker. I don't know if I need to say all these names, but that

causes lung tissue remodeling, and it can interfere

with oxygen absorption through the lung and cause shortness of breath and fatigue

and all sorts of things. But anything, you know, on either side of the heart,

like anything that affects the lungs, can possibly affect the heart,

anything that affects the kidneys, which is another thing that happens with

these inflammatory cytokines, driving inflammation.

So antidiuretic hormone in the

pituitary can be lowered. That causes a lot

of, basically, it makes your blood really thick because it

causes an exodus of free water

that you should be hanging onto, but you can't hang on to if you have

a lowered adh. And so if you have thicker blood,

obviously it's not going to be carrying oxygen as

well. It's also going to be another risk factor for

clotting. So. And it can look like breathlessness,

which to a heart patient is scary, and to a cardiologist is

scary. Yes. Which is what I was experiencing a lot

of. Yes. And the other thing, you know, a lot of people

complain about weight gain with biotoxin

illness. There's a lot of interaction with leptin

and leptin resistance and leptin receptors, and it can

cause really rapid weight gain not only due

to fluid, but actual, like, the fat receptors are being

impacted. And, of course, that can impact the heart, too,

you know, long term with diabetes and hyperlipidemia and

all sorts of things like that, atherosclerosis and whatnot. And I

gained 20 pounds. Yeah. And that's been, like,

not. It's not normal for you and it's not okay. No.

And it doesn't respond to diet and exercise. No.

Like, nothing budged. Yeah. Yeah.

So it has to be fixed on the cellular level and the brain level.

One other thing you tested me for

is the genetic testing to see if I had

the haplotypes, right? Is that how you say it? Haplotypes?

Yep. Yep. They're gene combinations. Yep, yep. And I have two.

Mm hmm. You got lucky.

Yeah. I'll have more than one. Yeah. Yeah. I'm winning at a lot of

things in my body, but, yeah.

Yes. And so, you know, I didn't know that. I mean,

there's. There's no way to know unless you do the testing. And it was like

this really tough storm of a lot of

stress. The heart surgery, mom

diese. I mean, my defenses were down,

and then I don't have the genetics to back me up.

Right. And that's usually, you know, a typical

story, because you can go many, many

years without reacting to mold when you have susceptibility.

And oftentimes I hear, oh, I got into a car

accident. I had surgery. I had a baby. I got

Covid. And then all heck breaks loose.

So it does seem like there's often a precipitating

event. It's not just a random, you know,

like, you used to be able to handle it.

Let's say it didn't used to bother you. When you were a child living

in South Carolina, you were fine.

Yeah, presumably. Presumably, yeah. But you

know, looking back at my life, like, even prior to

heart surgery, when I hit my head in

2018, when I sustained that really bad concussion,

then I started having the gut issues and I noticed I would have

a rash. And like, all there was like these little signs

that something wasn't right in my body. And so I also wonder

if, like, I went in to my heart journey,

not in the best of health to begin with.

Right. And, yeah, I mean, 2018 with

the head injury, if that's what precipitated it and you didn't really realize

it, I mean, we could theorize all day long, but it

could be that that is what started that

inflammatory cascade. Yeah. And

I also just want to, before we continue on the

inflammatory marker explanation, like, I'm sharing all this

with my listeners because I know every

heart patient I've had the privilege of interviewing or meeting,

none of us get to have our heart journey in

a vacuum. Life keeps on lifeing. Other

things happen. We get sick, we hit our heads, we break our

legs, things happen in addition to having heart

surgery. And so it just is this extra

added noise to what's already really loud and

hard and then to have

biotoxin exposure and it just

adds insult to injury. And

it's like something I didn't know I needed to be concerned about

this. And so I'm excited that we're doing this today because

I want other heart patients to know that it is

something we all do need to think about when we are in our

homes, in buildings, being mindful of

what we are exposed to. Hey, listeners, if there's a weird

delay there, we lost connection. Doctor

Thompson was talking about markons. I tried to

find a good stopping place

and she was talking about how kind of like

the downstream effects of Markons and

how it's like right there at the pituitary land where it

collects in the nasal passages. And what's interesting

is I tested positive for that. That's where Doctor Thompson started

with me in my treatment. And it took quite a while

to get it to go away. And what I

noticed is I no longer have sinus

infections, and if I get sick, it's not nearly as

severe. And so it's worth

pursuing and figuring out if you have it or

not. Now, Doctor Thompson, doctors regularly

test for mark ons. I mean, I had never heard about it until I met

you. So what's up with that? Only doctors

that treat biotoxin illness because a lot

of people walk around with Mark hounds and it doesn't impact them. And so if

it's not impacting you and causing increased low

msh, does it matter? No.

And again, it's just, it's a matter of the curriculum in medical

school. It doesn't cover this stuff. This is stuff that we have.

Even I had to learn after graduating from medical school.

Okay. Wow. Okay.

I hope a lot of doctors will listen to this episode.

So, like I was saying, we started with markons, and I

remember you telling me, you can't do the rest of the treatment until the

mark ons is gone. There's a step by step

way to treat someone like myself. And so that's

step one. Well, step one is

actually getting out of mold exposure. Oh, true. That's

true. Yep. Yeah. Good

point. Because what's the point if you're going to continue to live in it, right?

So if you're putting it in, and step two

is to take a binder, especially for people that

have the genetic haplotypes, the genetic

combinations where they can't get rid of biotoxins on their

own, they need to take a binder. So out of

exposure, one, take a binder, two

steps. Three, if you have markons, you have to treat

that. It's not an infection per se, but we use

antimicrobial things to treat it. And then

you can get your matrix metalloproteinase

down. Ideally, in your case,

that didn't happen, but there

is precedent for treating the next

step of VIP if you pass the VIP trial

with that vip nasal spray, since you were low at the

beginning, I knew that you were a good candidate for that

treatment. And VIP does so many things in the body

in terms of lowering inflammation,

adjusting your genes so that they don't produce so

many cytokines. So that also works to lower

inflammation. It improves your immune system, again,

because it lowers cytokine levels on the gene level,

and it improves oxygenation. So it helps

to normalize tgf beta one the rest of the

way and raise msh the rest of the

way so that you are back to

baseline. So ideally, if all of your

markers, all of your inflammatory markers are back to where they were

before you developed biotoxin illness, it's kind of like you're a

kid again, and you can tolerate a certain

amount of mold, etcetera,

once more, without going down that inflammatory cascade.

And I mean, obviously, at that point, your symptoms

are vastly improved or

resolved, right. Which I'm starting to

experience. I mean, I'm not out of the woods, but because I've been

on VIP for two or three months now. And

you said it's like at least six months, right? At

least. And because we weren't able to get your MMP nine

down all the way, probably because of cardiovascular

issues, you know, who knows how long it's going to take. We just have

to see there is a step by step treatment,

but it's always individual.

There are no two cases that are like. So I

can give you an estimate of how long I think it's going to take, but

we don't really know till we know,

unfortunately. And, you know, as I'm learning,

most things when it comes to a

major health issue take

time, like longer than our egos and our

calendars would allow. Right. Would like to

allow. So there are some other gene tests

that we sometimes do for these cases, and it's

100 pages of genes that can

be affected by this chronic

condition. If you think about how many genes are

involved and how many different body systems are involved and

unraveling all of that and having things work

in concert together, I mean, it's pretty

amazing. And to expect that to happen in a matter of weeks

or months is just, you know, very unreasonable.

Right. Yeah. And there's a grieving process I had

to go through when you told me that because I was like, but I've already

had, like, all these dumpster fires, and now I had this next dumpster

fire. It was a lot to accept and take

on, but the consequence of not dealing

with it is so great and dire that it was

either really suffer or just push

my sleeves up, get to work, and do what you told me to

do. Yeah. And that's the way you

have to approach it if you want to have success.

It is a marathon, except it's a marathon without

a finish line. So it sucks more. But

it is an arduous process, and it's

complex in that it's not only doing the

steps medically, but also, like I said before, step

one is out of exposure, and that can be really tough for

people. Right. Especially if they live in certain parts of the country. Like,

luckily, where I am, it's a little more dry. But

what are some of the hotspots in the United States States that

would have mold? Well, I mean, where you grew up. So the

east coast, especially along the eastern seaboard,

particularly tricky because there are several

different biotoxin illnesses in those areas

at once. Not only the mold, but also

tick borne illness is pretty prevalent there. There are

certain types of dinoflagellate blooms and

algal blooms that happen on the eastern seaboard. That can make people

really sick in some of the same ways as well. Other than that, I

mean, the Pacific Northwest, I mean, anywhere on the coast, is

potentially especially prone to

maltoxin illness. But if you have a building

and it has indoor plumbing, you're always at risk no matter where

you live. So it's kind of. I have a

ton of patients in Arizona. You know,

Montana is pretty dry, too, and there's a lot of water damage,

buildings here. So if there's not really any one place, if

there was, like, I would tell everybody to go there.

Yeah. Because it's a real pain in the neck dealing with this. I can speak

from experience. Okay, so someone

listening to you anywhere in the, in the United States or the world,

like, if they are concerned today, after listening to this

episode, where do they start? Because you are in

Bozeman, Montana. How do they

find someone that can help them? I mean, obviously you work with

patients long distance, but if that's just not an option for

them, like, how does someone even start with this

journey? Well, I would recommend if you have

symptoms that you think might be related to a biotoxin illness, go to

survivingmould calm and take their visual

contrast sensitivity test, which is a measure of

inflammation in your brain pressing on your optic nerve. Basically,

it's a screening test, so not everybody will have a

positive on that, but it also takes you through

a symptom checklist, which is handy.

Many people will have a positive on the VC's

test. And so if that happens, there's really

nothing else that can cause visual contrast

sensitivity deficits except for biotoxin

illness. As a matter of fact, that test was used

after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005 to

screen people for maltoxin illness. So if you think

you have an issue with biotoxin, and

especially if you don't have, if you

fail, I like to say you have a positive, but technically it says

fail on the test. You have a positive vc's test,

then you can go to their surviving mold doctor

list. There's also the ici.

Iseai.com

or.org is another organization I belong

to that has physicians listed around the

country. So you might be able to find somebody closer to you.

There aren't a ton of us. I was number three back in

2013, doctor certified in this

illness treatment system, and

we have a few hundred now, which is great, but it's still

not enough for everybody that needs us, so.

Right, you're full. Right. Like you,

I still take. I still, yeah, I still take new clients, but

yeah, it's we're busy.

Yes, put it that way, yes. And yet,

even though you're busy, you always show up just ready to help me

and meet me with grace. And

it has made what has been such a hard

road a little land a little easier. Didn't

help that I broke my leg in the middle of it all.

You had a few things. You had a few things,

but at. Least I was bringing my inflammation down, which helps the healing

of bones, right? Certainly, yeah. Thank you

so much for this conversation today. And if listeners

do want to find you, I'll obviously have it in the show notes. Show

notes. But I always like for practitioners to also

verbalize best ways to get in. Touch the best way to get in touch

with me is to go to my website, which is

www.trilliumclinic.net.

so trillium clinic.net

dot trillium is a flower,

a beautiful one. A beautiful flower. And it has a lot of medicinal

purposes to it. And we have a chatbot

and that's mostly how we communicate with our new patients or people that

have questions. Yeah, yeah. Great. Well,

again, you're busy. It's the end of the day for you

when we're recording, and so I just really want to thank you

for helping future listeners and

happy mold awareness month to you. Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Hey heart buddies, thank you for sharing a few beats of your

day with me today. Please be sure to follow or

subscribe to this podcast wherever you are listening.

Also be sure to share with a friend who will

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So be sure to drop me an

email@bootsheheartchamberpodcast.com.

again, I am your host, boots Knighton and

thanks for listening. Be sure to tune in next

Tuesday for another episode on open

heart surgery with Boots.