Julie Michelson: [00:00:00] Corey, welcome to the podcast.

Corey Levy: Thank you so much for having me, Julie. I'm so excited to be here.

Julie Michelson: I am so excited for our conversation. I had to just kind of cut myself off because I wanted to have the conversation before we have the conversation. Yeah. So I, uh, I'm always fascinated by people's stories anyway.

Julie Michelson: But especially when it's something that to me is, is like so specialized. So how did you get into the world of wellness or of Well, well mold and wellness together? Yeah. Like, because that's not something, usually little boys are like, Ooh, this is what I wanna do.

Corey Levy: No, they're, they're not. I actually want, I think at some point I wanted to be a firefighter, but that went away really fast.

Corey Levy: Um, and then, you know, growing up like a lot of boys, you kind of idolize your dad a little bit. Yes. Um, and so that was part of, of my journey too. My dad actually, um, was a [00:01:00] trailblazer in the indoor air quality space. Uh, so he started, uh, our first location, uh, back in 2003. Uh. On the East coast where I grew up.

Corey Levy: Um, and a big driver for him was actually my brother. My brother had, uh, really bad asthma, really bad eczema as a kid. And, um, when my dad left the telecom world, um, he had a friend who was actually on the other side of the business from where I'm at. He was on the remediation side.

Julie Michelson: Okay.

Corey Levy: Um, and so, uh, he started to do inspections.

Corey Levy: He started to do, uh, you know, kind of follow him and, and started this business. Then I kind of joke around and say, um, since I'm a second generation indoor air quality expert, that really means that I've been in crawl spaces since I was around 17 years old, which sounds

Julie Michelson: like it could be not so healthy.

Julie Michelson: So I'm, I'm,

Corey Levy: yeah. Yeah. I'm guessing

Julie Michelson: you did it the right way.

Corey Levy: I did it. I did. Yeah. And that's the one thing about what my family, how we got kind of more towards the [00:02:00] wellness side. It's initially when, when Steve, my, my dad started the business. He kind of started on what I would consider to be more generic type of mold inspections.

Corey Levy: You're buying a house, you had a leak, very, a leak in a specific area that you wanted look at, looked at. Um, but there was a, a client that we had that was, was sick and actually asked us, Hey, do you know any doctors that I can speak with? And unfortunately at that time we didn't. Sure. And so we took it upon ourselves to go out and find, um.

Corey Levy: Find doctors. And the first, uh, conference we went to was actually the American Academy of Environmental Medicine at that time, uh, you know, 15, 16 years ago, some odd years ago. Um, it was really the only one of its kind. And, uh, we showed up and we were, there was probably 300 some odd doctors there. We were the only environmental consultants in the room.

Corey Levy: Wow. It was my dad, my uncle, smart [00:03:00] move, and myself. Yeah. Right. And let me tell you something, I understood zero of what they were talking about. Sure,

Julie Michelson: sure. You know,

Corey Levy: um, but we learned so much and, um, we ended up making great connections with some practitioners who really helped shape us and, and explain to us, Hey, we've been looking.

Corey Levy: For people in the indoor air quality space to help find what we're seeing in our patients' bodies. Yeah. And so we started our journey back then of learning and, and actually sitting down with doctors and the doctor saying, Hey, this is what I'm seeing. Here are their mycotoxins. Where is this coming from?

Corey Levy: Right. Can you help us? And so as we dove into it more and more, uh, we've really refined ourselves into essentially now where we're, you know, a national company. We work throughout the US in most places, and our, our. Screw line is that everybody we work with is dealing with health concerns, so. Sure. Um, either [00:04:00] whether they know it

Julie Michelson: or not, right.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. Either it's

Corey Levy: directly the home. Yeah. Or they're dealing with an underlying health condition, which I I think a lot of, of the people in your audience have listened to this, this show, um, are dealing with, it's, they're diagnosed with something, but why am I not pushing through Right. What is happening?

Julie Michelson: Yeah. I love that, that you say that. Um, because we tend to forget, especially with the western medicine model we live in right with, live with right now, that the body is designed to heal. And so, you know, the, the, when you get a diagnosis or even if you don't have one and you're struggling, you know, it's the, the why is where the answer is, why isn't the body able to handle this on its own?

Julie Michelson: And so often mycotoxins are at least an underlying factor. Um, and especially in the autoimmune space. Oh yeah. Um, and I, and it is, I love that you [00:05:00] said you're nationwide. When I moved to Colorado, um, from South Florida where we were aware, you know, mold was everywhere. I, the first home we almost bought in Colorado, we wanted to do a mold inspection 'cause it was a stucco home and they, you know, oh, there's no mold in Colorado.

Julie Michelson: It's so dry here. Well, it was like, well, if you wanna sell us the home, we're gonna, we're gonna check. And sure enough, it, it, it had mold and we, we moved on. Um, now 20 something years later, it, it has especially, you know, Boulder flooded years ago, like, oh yeah, you know, we're, we're now a little more savvy in Colorado than we used to be.

Julie Michelson: As far as it is everywhere. It's everywhere. And I, and I'm

Corey Levy: glad, I'm glad you brought that up too, because I think a lot of our initial thought process is exactly this. It's like, oh, well I live in Florida, so I'm bound to have it. Or [00:06:00] Oh, I'm in Tucson, Arizona where it's super dry. I'm in the desert. There's no way it's here.

Corey Levy: Right.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: And I think the. The environmental impact plays a role in how the structure is going to form mold for sure. But also unpack how we build, right? Yeah. And, and how we maintain. And I think that that is something that's completely missed being missed in this conversation of, yeah, so you're in the desert, you may not get as much humidity, you may not get rain.

Corey Levy: That could as much, that could impact. Right, but you have plumbing,

Julie Michelson: you have pipes, you have pipes, right? You have

Corey Levy: HVAC systems that you wanna be around.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. You

Corey Levy: have the makings for other things. And, and I remember this so vividly when I was younger before my dad was in, in, uh, in the industry, and we had a small leak underneath the sink and, um, and ended up becoming part of a, a, a problem that we found in the house that it could have been impacting my brother.[00:07:00]

Corey Levy: And, um, when it happened, we just let it dry. Sure. And then years later, you know, my dad found there was an issue there, but I think so many people think, oh well if I stop the leak underneath the sink, I've solved the problem. Right. With what's crazy, Julie and what we do, the majority of the issues that we find in people's houses are actually related to previous water damage.

Corey Levy: Yeah, and say

Julie Michelson: that again, 'cause that's so important for people to understand.

Corey Levy: Yeah. So the majority of the issues that we find in people's houses are actually related to previous water damage. There's this theory that moisture's gone mold is gone, right? It's like this mold is this just kind of evaporation, right?

Corey Levy: Mm-hmm. That they go hand in hand, right? But unfortunately they don't. So the best way to think about this, if you guys can all imagine like a tree, right? Yeah. [00:08:00] If you stop watering the tree outside, it's not like once it's dry and you walk by and you're like, oh, the tree's gone. That's great. Right? I don't have to hire a tree removal service.

Corey Levy: Right? Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The tree starts to shed its leaves. And those leaves get super dry and brittle and they actually break up into smaller pieces. Right? And then decades and decades go down where that tree just sits there before eventually, maybe a storm knocks it over, and then it starts to rot out right?

Corey Levy: In your home, when you have a water event, mold grows as quickly as 24 to 48 hours, or seven to 10 days, depending on the type of species. After that water stopped and even the building material is dry, the colony remains, and then it goes to a very similar cycle, Julie, where it gets dry. So it aerosolize easier, it fragments easier, it gets into the [00:09:00] body easier.

Corey Levy: And

Julie Michelson: I, I wanna talk about, you're an, you're an air quality specialist, right? Mm-hmm. Like we, we tend to think of mold as, you know. Oh my gosh. It really, I think what people think of as mildew, right? Like they think of this dark stuff they see mm-hmm. And, and don't realize, so I wanna talk about the importance of it.

Julie Michelson: It's, it's the spores in the air that are making you sick. It's not what's sitting under the sink. If it was just, yeah. Gonna stay there contained fine. Oh, I'm

Corey Levy: so happy you said that because otherwise I wouldn't even have a job. Right? 'cause if mold just stayed there, then we wouldn't even be talking right now, Jamal, right.

Corey Levy: Um, but mold produces byproducts, right? And ultimately that moves through the environment and through the air. And then what happens is this stuff actually settles out into our dust, right? So air is always changing, always moving. So you may have air [00:10:00] quality that shifts throughout the day, you know, depending on temperature, humidity, occupancy, time of day, the air quality is always gonna be different, but I.

Corey Levy: If you could imagine. Do, did you ever watch Snoopy as a kid?

Julie Michelson: Of course. Okay. Do you remember Pigpen? All the holidays?

Corey Levy: Yeah. My mom was obsessed with it when we were growing up. Um, do you remember Pigpen, the little dirty kid that walked the, with the, with the cloud around him?

Julie Michelson: We have, we have a chicken that reminds us of Pigpen.

Julie Michelson: Yes, I do. I do. She just always looks sturdy.

Corey Levy: She always looks dirty. Well. So the, the idea of pigpen is, yeah, pigpen is actually similar to what happens when we walk around, even when we, after we shower, right, and are clean because we're re aerosolizing everything as we move. And these spores, these fragments of spores, these toxins that get into our home.

Corey Levy: They re aerosolized. So when you sit down on a couch or you pick up papers off of a desk, you're rebreathing all of that in. So even [00:11:00] after these particles settle out, you're reintroducing to your breathing zone consistently. That's why it's really important to make sure that you're keeping dust down and, and decluttering and all these things.

Corey Levy: 'cause that's gonna help just from an easy perspective of, of limiting your exposure in in your house.

Julie Michelson: I'm so glad that you said that, and I love, I can never now un think of myself as Pigpen now. Thanks for that visual. Sorry about that. No, it is, it's so important. And, and this is why, and I, I'm like, I keep, I wanna steer it back, but I, I, I am in the rabbit hole now.

Julie Michelson: Um. We're gonna, we're going to, I'm gonna say this and then we're gonna go backwards, but this is why I literally almost break out in hives when people say, you know, oh yeah, we have mold, but you know, my husband's handy. We're gonna, you know, we can handle it. And I'm like, no, don't touch it. Don't disrupt.

Julie Michelson: Um, so [00:12:00] bef you can answer that if you want, but I wanted, I want to also talk about. Mold inspections because mm-hmm. Um, and air quality inspections, because there, there is it, I don't know. There's a lot of misunderstanding. There's different approaches and, you know, as somebody in this camp says that's the way to do it and that's, you know, it, there's a lot, I think, a lot of confusion around, well, how do I even know if I got an inspection, if it was a, a good thorough inspection.

Corey Levy: Yeah, it's a great, um. It's a great question, right? So there, unfortunately in our industry, it's very difficult to determine the difference between the two on a phone call many times too, right? And for your audience especially, it's so important to make sure you're asking the right questions. Actually, we have a guide.

Corey Levy: I'll give you where it's like 10 questions on how to [00:13:00] interview a remediation company and an inspection company. I'll make sure I send that over to you guys.

Julie Michelson: Awesome. And do you feel like they should be two separate companies?

Corey Levy: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Because you're from Jersey, that's why. Yeah, exactly.

Corey Levy: It's actually now it's like eight states that, uh, I think six or eight states that they have to be separate. It's, it's, it's the law.

Julie Michelson: I think it should be. I really do. It should be.

Corey Levy: Yeah. Yeah. So look, there's, there's air quality tests and inspections, and then there's a actual deep dive assessment of the home, and they're very, very different things, right?

Corey Levy: So the way that I look at air quality inspections is if you are wanting, if somebody's gonna come out to your home. Tell you they'll be there for like an hour to two hours and they walk in, they do this very visual. Oh yeah, look around. Okay. Not really seeing much. Everything is dry here. I'm gonna go ahead and just take a bunch of air samples in your home that will tell us there's a problem.[00:14:00]

Corey Levy: You should ask them to leave immediately. Um, because they're not actually adding any value in the process. Right. Okay. Um, now at Thorough assessment. An inspection should be a full top to bottom assessment of the home. They should be on site four to seven hours or more, depending on the size of the property.

Corey Levy: And they're not just looking in the general living areas of the home, but they're checking the exterior of the house. They're in the attic spaces, they're in the basement, the crawl space. They're opening up your air handler units. They're looking in your ducts. They're checking for active moisture.

Corey Levy: Inactive moisture. I mean, this process is a very thorough assessment of the home because here's a little secret. Okay. Don't tell anybody

Julie Michelson: this. I'm ready. But here's the secret. Are you ready?

Corey Levy: Every single home has mold.

Julie Michelson: Sure.

Corey Levy: Every home.

Julie Michelson: Okay.

Corey Levy: Yeah. And so if somebody comes into your house and tells you you have [00:15:00] no mold, then they, they dunno what they're doing.

Corey Levy: Now here's the, here's the, to unpack that a little bit more. It's not all, there's all

Julie Michelson: detrimental to your health.

Corey Levy: Exactly right. And so what you really need to understand is that you, you, there are always gonna be sources. It's about prioritizing source in the home, right? And so there are gonna be things that should be treated as a five alarm, fire.

Corey Levy: Urgent, urgent, urgent. And then there are gonna be things that you know, hey, look, this is, this is kind of normal. This is settlement. This is part of the acclimate of the home, and you don't need to worry about it. If you have somebody that's just focused on utilizing one tool to diagnose your whole home, IE air samples, that's like going to a doctor with a broken arm and them telling you, you know what?

Corey Levy: I have a strep test I can give you. Well, it's, it's, it's a medical test, right? You need an x-ray. Right. So at the end of the day, it's about making sure that they're really thoroughly looking and using, uh, a breadth of [00:16:00] different test types that are applicable to what they're finding in the home.

Julie Michelson: Uh, I'm so glad you said that.

Julie Michelson: And I, I built the home. I'm in Little Bill. Mm-hmm. Wow. Sea time's flying almost eight years ago now. Oh, wow. Um, and sh not that long after I built the home, I, I had some visible mold. Because I'm me and I'm still in my, you know, trying to, to get rid of my, all my mycotoxins that, that are now, they don't make me sick anymore, but I'd like them gone.

Julie Michelson: Um, I, I dug in and, you know, got a, a really great inspector and, and so that's why I'm really glad that you said every home has mold. Mm-hmm. I did in fact have mold in my home. None of it. Were the strains of mycotoxins that I'm dealing, you know, dealing with, none of them were actually even harmful. Um, but because I didn't wanna take a [00:17:00] chance, for me, it was worth testing.

Julie Michelson: Most people who feel well. Aren't gonna, you know, test a pretty new home. Um, and we've talked about, I've, I've done some interviews on why new homes. You mentioned construction process. Um, yeah. New homes are, are definitely not off of the list of, you know, culprit likely culprits for sure. Yeah. Um, but, but that is where having an inspection that, that you can trust.

Julie Michelson: Right. Is really, really helpful. Um, and I'll add from my end for listeners that, you know, if they, whether they've already done toxin testing or not, you know, if, if you haven't and, and you're considering, oh my gosh, is this part of the problem, it is important to compare, you know, what is in your body

Corey Levy: Oh yeah.

Julie Michelson: Versus what's in the home because we are always gonna find some stuff in the home.

Corey Levy: A hundred percent actually. [00:18:00] Part of the process. 'cause there's, there's, I think a lot of times people, when we talk to 'em on the phone, they're expecting to see black mold crawling up the wall. Yes. Right. Yeah. And so you alluded to this a little bit earlier of just like.

Corey Levy: Where, what is it? Where is it? Right. Well, you

Julie Michelson: wouldn't need a job if that's Yeah. Everything that was making people sick. Right. Exactly. Like we, we, you know, for those of us that are blessed with vision, we could, we could do that ourselves.

Corey Levy: Right, exactly. And but here's the thing with mold. It tends to grow in a variety of other colors, right?

Julie Michelson: Yes. And

Corey Levy: so, um, black mold definitely has the best publicist without a doubt. Okay. For for sure. Whoever they hired, they're doing a great job, but it's so noticeable. Yeah. But it's not the only mold type that can impact us either. And a lot of the times it's gray, it's dustlike, it actually grows in sometimes pink, blues and greens.

Corey Levy: Yep. Right. But here's the thing, [00:19:00] it's not. Usually on the surfaces in our room. Right. Right. It's hidden. Yeah. And so when I talk to people on the phone and they, they call and they say, Hey, you know, I, I, I spoke with my practitioner and I've got these mycotoxins in my body, right? Mm-hmm. And I'm looking at my house, Cory, and I don't see anything.

Corey Levy: Yeah. And I go, okay, what are you looking for? Well, there's no black mold anywhere.

Julie Michelson: Yeah,

Corey Levy: there's a problem. The actually, the secret to finding mold in your home is to not look for mold in your home.

Julie Michelson: Right.

Corey Levy: Okay. That is the secret. Okay. So instead, you need to look for the five signs of water damage in the home.

Corey Levy: When you do that, that's when you're going to find these issues that we're talking about. And so it's, you know, it's, it's bubbling, it's buckling and separating of the building materials. It's cracking [00:20:00] and peeling, it's staining and it's rust and eff fluorescence. And if you look for that, that is the beginning of where mold will grow, even if it's dry now.

Corey Levy: Even if there's no active moisture, as we all know, water is the evolution of life. So it starts like a, like a flame to a fire right there. And then after, even after it's dry, the mold is gonna stay within that spot. So instead of going through the home and looking for mold, these are the little footprints.

Corey Levy: Water will leave behind and clues and that tends to be the tip of the iceberg.

Julie Michelson: I love that you that, and I love, thank you for sharing those signs with us and, and it circles back to what you said earlier about, you know, it's usually previous. Water damage, which our brains say like, oh, that's old. It's fine.

Julie Michelson: Right. I, I mean, anybody who's, you know, bought a home [00:21:00] or lived in an apartment, you know, Mo lived in more than one place. Yeah. You know, just think of like every time you look under a sink. Right. Like exactly. We discount, like how common is that to see water damage under a sink that people discount, like, oh, that's old.

Julie Michelson: You know? Oh. Must have had a leak at some point. Um, so I, I love, but it's

Corey Levy: actually a problem. Yeah. And being, being US Jersey folks, Uhhuh. Right. Um. You were already, you were already left. But Sandy, which I'm old I'm sure. Yeah. I was gone. You were in Florida for, you were gone. I was so I was on the ground in Sandy when it happened.

Corey Levy: I was, I mean I was all, all down the shore helping at houses. And um, you know what's really interesting is we didn't get super busy from Sandy until about three or four years later.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: The reason being is because you had a lot of disaster crews come in and try [00:22:00] and help people as quickly as they could.

Corey Levy: People were moving so fast or homeowners couldn't get help. Yeah. And so what they were doing is they were just drying out as best they could and then painting over things. And you would walk into these houses and think there's no, there's no problem just, just looking at it. It looks,

Julie Michelson: looks pretty. Yeah.

Julie Michelson: Right.

Corey Levy: But then the symptoms start coming because. Everything is dry at this point, but the mold is still back behind these walls now. And as you mentioned before, it doesn't stay where it is. It produces three main byproducts. It produces spores, gases called m VOCs and toxins called mycotoxins. And each one of these can have different impacts on her health.

Corey Levy: And so as these things move out into the general living areas of the home, and we start to breathe them in. We start to see that impact. But yeah, if, if, you know, you may see some signs of visual mold, but the real key there is looking for those, those water footprints.

Julie Michelson: Uh, such gold, like I feel like [00:23:00] listeners already have gotten so much from this, especially because you also, you offer those resources of how to, it is a big.

Julie Michelson: Challenge, I think, um, just like, you know, anything that, that kind of gains some, some recognition, then you get some charlatans and you, you get sometimes even people with good intentions that just don't have the training to do things the right way. Um, yeah. And so, yeah,

Corey Levy: that, that, that's why I think making sure you're asking the right questions because you're, you, uh, that's really a great point that you brought that up.

Corey Levy: So a lot of certifications, um. And even state licenses. It's one week course, and then you get a license that's

Julie Michelson: crazy.

Corey Levy: One week.

Julie Michelson: It's such a complicated thing,

Corey Levy: and it is so complicated. So complicated, right? And so you have to be very wary. [00:24:00] I always say to, to our, so when people call in, we have what we call empowerment coaches.

Corey Levy: They, they, before we even get anybody to work with us, they have to speak to somebody first to make sure that they're at the right point in the journey. Otherwise, we push 'em to resources before. Right. And um. The ones that ask the most questions are always the ones that are, are going to be safest through this process.

Corey Levy: Right? Yeah. And we, we like when people ask those questions. 'cause it's important. So many times I hear people that say, hi, I brought this person in, I spent all this money. They, they didn't find anything, but my practitioners telling me there's still a problem. We come in and there's multiple issues in the house.

Corey Levy: Right? Yeah.

Julie Michelson: It's

Corey Levy: sad.

Julie Michelson: And so

Corey Levy: it's sad, right? So there, there are tools. To help. I, I think, uh, uh, talking through this a little bit more will really help the listeners. So visually looking for those five signs is, is awesome, right? Okay. Mm-hmm. But then what, so maybe I'm seeing a few of them here or [00:25:00] there, right?

Corey Levy: You can, you kind of have two paths. Path one, you go right to an inspection where you can use those resources that I mentioned before to help interview, um, or path two. If you really wanna understand, eh, you know what? I'm not really seeing anything. I don't think this is that big of a deal. You can screen your home, you can screen test your house to understand if there's a problem within the environment or not.

Corey Levy: And so are you familiar with like imi, ERMI or the just test? I am. You are? Okay. Great. Mm-hmm. So, um, the tool was. Was created by the EPA when they performed a healthy home survey of 1100 houses. Okay? Half of those homes when surveyed had a known history of water damage and mold, and the other half did not.

Corey Levy: And so what they came out with was a list of 36 mold species that are commonly found inside these different types of houses. [00:26:00] And then they looked at the geometric mean of each of those species to determine what was considered normal in. Then based off of the elevations over normal, they're able to give you a score that determines and plots you against the other homes in the study.

Corey Levy: So it's not gonna tell you where the mold is, it's not gonna tell you how long it's been there, any of that type of stuff, right. But it is a good baseline to help understand whether or not there's a source of a, uh uh, there could be sources within the home Now. When IBI first came out, as you know, it's, it's was really grasped by the wellness and medical community.

Corey Levy: Yep. And there's been a lot of misinterpretations of it, right? Mm-hmm. So you have to really understand how to read it. That's why we created the dust test. And so this automatically actually crosses the data from your home with other inspections we performed. And then we talk you through your results and something you said earlier, which is really important, we [00:27:00] correlate.

Corey Levy: What's in your body to what's in your home. Right? Right. Because what we can see, if you have mycotoxins in your body, even if you're doing organic acid testing, or if you're doing some IgE testing or IgG testing, there's gonna be a lot of correlation between what's in the home and what's in the body.

Corey Levy: That can help tie things back together. And for me, what I always think is, Hey, if we're seeing enough of these correlations here,

Julie Michelson: yeah.

Corey Levy: There's likely something going on in the home that's current because Yeah, you definitely had an exposure before. There's no doubt. We all have. We all have.

Julie Michelson: Sure.

Corey Levy: Right.

Corey Levy: Sure. But if there's enough correlation, kind of like what you went through, right? Yeah. You tested your home. There wasn't a correlation in your clinicals to your environment, but you didn't wanna take a chance. You handled it anyways. Sure. But for many of the clients that we, that we see that go through the process of, all right, you know what, I'm gonna start with the dust test.

Corey Levy: I'm gonna see what's in my [00:28:00] home and what's in my body. And there's kind of your insurance policy, if you will. There's a guarantee that you're gonna have something that's gonna be found there, right?

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: And then, you know, getting a good inspection from there to verify and figure out where those sources are located.

Julie Michelson: Which I think is so important and, and another approach depending on, and, and I wanna talk about, um, the individual journey, right? Because we all, but, but one of, one of the other things people can do, even if it, the, just, even the whole idea of finding a good inspector or, or. You know, testing themselves, like if they're not ready for that, but they really wanna know.

Julie Michelson: Sometimes exposure is from work school, like it doesn't ha it's not always a hundred percent the home. Um, I, I have, I'll, I'll have other family members tested because that's the funky thing about it, is that you may have, you know, five people living in a [00:29:00] home. You know, one might be really sick, some may have completely different kind of symptoms that they've either normalized or they don't even think of as related.

Julie Michelson: Like it just can express so differently in all of us. Yeah. Um, and so I, I have, I have a client that, uh, I was really, really curious and what they wanted to do as first step was I tested the husband as well and they had identical through the roof. Wow. Oh wow. Like toxin profiles and it was like, it's your, it's your home is, this is not from childhood.

Julie Michelson: They didn't grow up in the same house, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, you can get crafty and, which brings me to, what I really, really wanna make sure we do talk about is this the journey, right? Yeah. And, and honoring where we, where each of us are in our wellness journey, in our healing process, in our.

Julie Michelson: Sometimes in [00:30:00] investigation, uh, of what's going on. Um, yeah. And yeah, everybody's

Corey Levy: different down to not just like where we're at, even in our journey of healing, but even just peeling it back even further than that. Are you a homeowner? Are you a renter? Right? I mean, you're gonna have two completely different goals.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: It's just It is, it is. And it's not always necessarily the same path that you have to go down. When you're in that scenario, you know, I, as somebody who rented before I purchased my, before I bought my first home, you know, I a little bit crazy. I, I'd probably look at probably like a hundred places to before I live there.

Corey Levy: Um, but even, yep, I'll

Julie Michelson: live, wherever you say is. Okay. There

Corey Levy: you go. Good idea. I'll

Julie Michelson: follow you.

Corey Levy: But here's the thing, like the last place I was in, even, even after. Going through and everything looked great. I had a leak. [00:31:00] Like nobody's, nobody's like, you know, impervious to any of this stuff. Sure. And the really kind of difficult part, like I sold myself to this, this homeowner, I was like, Hey, yeah, I'm, I, I'll, I'll keep this place so great for you.

Corey Levy: If there's water, I'll handle it immediately. I'm, I'm, I'm in the biz, right? And he was like, yeah, this is great. Great. But then of course, something happened. And it shifted from we're great friends to, I want this done right. And he did it right. Right. Yeah. And the problem is that as a renter, you only have so much control.

Corey Levy: Right. And when you really look at, say you do the dust test and you get these results back, and it's showing that there's a problem. You have to look at your relationship with the landlord if you're a renter. Because the last thing you wanna do is you've already spent a couple hundred dollars on a test, is you wanna put, [00:32:00] you don't wanna put more resource, more time, more energy into this process if it's gonna be met with resistance.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. And

Corey Levy: then you're in a scenario where unfortunately they're not doing things right. You're living in the place.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: Even if it's not done under malice. Even if it's just done with, I'm gonna go with the route that my insurance company says to go and do. Or my friend who's a plumber says to do. Right?

Corey Levy: Yep. Um, that doesn't correlate exactly right. Yeah. Um, it's tough. So it's tough. It's really tough. And when you are talking with people like at the dust test, when we help align a lot of these things together for people. The question always comes at the end of this is, Hey, you know, what is your living situation?

Corey Levy: Do you like it here? If you're a renter and you love it and you have a great relationship with your landlord, great. Maybe inspection does [00:33:00] make sense. Maybe you don't wanna uproot your family. You wanna stay there. You see yourself here for a while. That is awesome. That makes sense. Right? But if your landlord is not a nice person and they're going to be very difficult, um, then maybe it's better serving you to find a way out of your lease and move on.

Corey Levy: Yeah. And put that energy, that that focus, because if you're dealing with other things, you're dealing with other health concerns, which I know a lot of listeners are it the stress from that. Yeah.

Julie Michelson: Driving symptoms. Yeah. It's, it's bad, right? It's,

Corey Levy: it's, it's gonna flare it all up.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. And often, you know, one of the, the typical across the board symptoms, no matter what kind of autoimmunity or chronic illness is fatigue anyway.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. And so, you know, um,

Corey Levy: add this in and, and that's, that it's over, it can be

Julie Michelson: overwhelming. And I wanna dispel some myths because Yeah. Let's do

Corey Levy: it.

Julie Michelson: Talking about that idea and [00:34:00] sometimes the be the best choice is to move like that, that, that sometimes is the choice. That that is the all around best choice.

Julie Michelson: Um, but for so many years, those of us in this wellness space have heard and been taught and told, and then pass that information along to people. Um, you have to leave everything. Like, you cannot take your, you know, if you did move, um, or even if you are doing a professional remediation, you know, that, that it's, it's all gotta go.

Julie Michelson: You can't keep your clothes, your books, your anything, um, or you're just gonna stay sick.

Corey Levy: Yeah. You know, I think for a long time, Julie, that was a, a, an approach that a lot of people in the industry used. I. Right. Um, more of a, let's make sure that we're trying to eliminate everything. Mm-hmm. But, but what we've [00:35:00] seen now is something very different.

Corey Levy: And if you really think about it, um, it's never, let's just think about how clothes are made and where they're made. Like they're, they're not made. Let's not a hospital clean room. Let's not, let's not, okay, let's, I got

Julie Michelson: pigpen again in my kidding.

Corey Levy: But you know, like they, they're there, many of them are made in these factories that are leaking, right?

Corey Levy: Right. And then they're put in these shipping containers that are gross in cardboard boxes, and then they're stored in a facility here before they hit the floor. And they're brand new. Right. You don't think those have some sort of mold exposure to them? Ah, right.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Corey Levy: So like it's never really our, our stuff right now, granted, there's, there's layers to this and we actually have a guide that how to clean your stuff, guide That I'll, I'll send to you as well, that people can get.

Corey Levy: But if you think about the [00:36:00] fact of how mold works. Again, back to what you, you said earlier. Yeah. If it stayed under the sink, we would not be talking right now. Right. You need this analogy of a factory mold creates a colony and then it creates byproducts. Well, think of a factory next to a lake. If a factory is next to a lake and it's polluting the lake.

Corey Levy: The government doesn't come in and just shut the factory down. It has to clean the pollutants in the lake and vice versa. Right? Well, in the home you have little tiny mold factories and they're creating spores, and they're creating gases called M VOCs, and they're creating chemicals called mycotoxins and these spread throughout the home.

Corey Levy: Okay, so what do we need to do? We gotta go find those factories and we gotta shut 'em down. Okay? But then you need to clean, you have to go through that cleaning process, right? And if you've got contents, clothes, and pouches and books and all these other things that are physically growing mold [00:37:00] on them, yes, they should be thrown away.

Corey Levy: Sure. A hundred percent.

Julie Michelson: Right? That's logical.

Corey Levy: That's logical, right? Well, we would think so, but the amount of time, some people are like, Hey, this one this, I, I love

Julie Michelson: this thing. Yeah, I love this one thing, but there's mold on it.

Corey Levy: But how is it gonna impact me at, look, it should go right. Um, but the, the idea here is if you deal with the home and clean the majority of people.

Corey Levy: Are seeing the results that they need to see from a health perspective. Right? And it's not about taking a match to all of our stuff and moving and, and thank you. Moving on, because every here, back to what we said earlier, every home has something, right? So if you, it is about having the right team around you.

Corey Levy: Making sure you're getting the sources handled. You need the right practitioner. You need somebody like yourself who's gonna help coach them through doing the right [00:38:00] things for the body. And just like we're talking now, we're another spoke in that wheel on the assessment side of the property. We need to make sure we're finding the problems, we're prioritizing those issues.

Corey Levy: You're putting the resource towards the right areas that are gonna give you the highest return on overall air quality in the home. If you take the right path that way we don't need to throw all of our stuff away. Yeah,

Julie Michelson: yeah. Well, and it, it, it goes back to like I just mentioned, you know, I'm still working on years later, there's still evidence of from when I was so sick, you know, my mycotoxins or somebody might look at a test I did, you know, if I did one this week and be like, oh my gosh.

Julie Michelson: But I feel great. It's, there is no perfect Right. Our, our bodies and everybody has, I, I, I, it's my professional term. We all have a different tipping point. Yes. So somebody may have a really high toxic burden, but they feel great. I. And somebody else might have just, you [00:39:00] know, just one smaller exposure, maybe enough to tip them into illness.

Julie Michelson: And I, I think of the home as this extension of us in that sense too, where, which is, it goes back to the, we don't have to burn it all down. Mm-hmm. Better is better. It's just everybody has a different, so I love that you help people. Focus on, Hey, this is where your energetic and financial resources are going to serve you the most.

Julie Michelson: Yeah. Versus this perfect idea of, oh, just start over.

Corey Levy: Yeah. Like, it's, it, it is, it is. That is, unfortunately you go online, you, you, you get into some of these groups and. It pains me to see people who already are so financially strained through this process. Yeah. Right. Treatment is not cheap. Right, right.

Corey Levy: This whole process is not cheap. It's extremely draining financially. Yeah. And so [00:40:00] then you see people who are like, I've done the remediation. I had somebody come out and I put. My life savings towards this. Right. And I still feel terrible, and so now I gotta throw everything away. Right. And back to this understanding of prioritization.

Corey Levy: Unfortunately, in many of those cases, you had the person come out, they found a problem, but was that the right problem? Right. Yes. So then what we're doing is we're, we're going after maybe a lower priority issue that had a high cost. Yeah. And so here's the return. The return isn't great as it needs to be, versus an area that should have been a higher priority.

Corey Levy: And maybe it was like a medium or a lower cost, but that would've had such a bigger return. Right. On how you're being impacted, like I, I, I, and you mentioned something that I really wanna touch on about yourself, and I think it's. So [00:41:00] important for people to understand the tipping point. 'cause it's such, I talk about this all the time too.

Corey Levy: We all deal with different burdens. You have a household of five people and one person's really sick and this person is not, and these peripheral maybe, right? We're all different, right? And we're all gonna react different to our environment. But when you work with people like yourself. Who have the data about the body and you get the right data about the home, you can really make informed decisions properly about getting you down the road.

Corey Levy: So that this idea of this financial, I gotta rip every wall in my house out. I gotta throw all my contents away. Yeah, I gotta start my life over becomes a lot more manageable and you can actually progress this in the right direction. While it's still maybe costly to go through all of this, right, at least we're not starting our life from zero and trying to rebuild and really being [00:42:00] focused on getting to the right things that are gonna have the biggest return.

Julie Michelson: And I love, I love that approach. It's the same approach we take with, with health in general, right? Is where can we get, start, just start getting the wins, right? Like where's the impact? Because you know, financial resources may be limited. Um. But even just energetic resources, right? Like you mentioned stress and the whole thing.

Julie Michelson: So it's like, if we can, if, if we can start to move the needle, like what's gonna move the needle the quickest, even if it's not the home run. It's, it's, it's that, like you said, what's gonna have that most impact? It's the same approach we take with the body. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So I, I love, I love that it, it really carries the kind of the, the home is the extension of the body analogy.

Julie Michelson: I know. I'm,

Corey Levy: I'm gonna steal that from you. [00:43:00]

Julie Michelson: It just, just came outta my mouth. You inspired me. So I, I warned you before we hit record that Yeah. A, I was gonna have a hard time keeping, keeping to our allotted time, but also Yeah, that's fine. Um. You had mentioned something that, that is, it is, when it comes to mold, it is, I literally, my biggest pet peeve, so I have to ask this question, even if listeners think it's, oh, it's another Julie non-sequitur.

Julie Michelson: Um, sh Should you, I'm not even, I'm not gonna tee it up and give you my opinion. Should you be using bleach on mold?

Corey Levy: No.

Julie Michelson: Why not? It makes it look pretty.

Corey Levy: It makes it look pretty. So here's the thing, with bleach, it doesn't, it doesn't, um, penetrate deep enough. Okay, so first off, this idea of bleach and like this [00:44:00] DIY look.

Corey Levy: I just don't do it. I'm always down to do DIY, like small projects for someone like the least handy person. So anytime my wife sees me with a hammer, she's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Um, so, um, but like the idea of DIY in general, um, is it, it you need to make sure you have the right plan.

Corey Levy: So the DIY makes sense, right? Yeah. It's like. Unboxing IKEA furniture without instructions. Okay. Right. You, it, it could, it's gonna take you a long time. It's probably not gonna come out right when you look at it in the home, you know, throwing bleach on something, it has a high kill rate. Great. We're killing something.

Corey Levy: Okay. That seems like it's a good idea, but we're only killing the top layer because the molecules of bleach are not gonna penetrate deep enough to get to the growth structures. So go back to that tree outside that we were talking about before. I'm ripping the leaves off a tree [00:45:00] when I walk outside and see that tree again.

Corey Levy: I didn't kill the tree, right? I gotta get down to the roots and unroot it, right? Yeah. And so when the way mold works, it plants root-like structure. It's called mycelia. It's got PHE that are like branches and then on top of the phe at the spores. Okay, so when we walk up to it and bleach it, the po, the molecules of the bleach will, will kill what's on the surface.

Corey Levy: Okay? And then what's left as that bleach chemical evaporate, evaporates is water. What does water do? It's super sucks. It it sucks right down into what it's growing. Darn it.

Julie Michelson: Come on, Corey.

Corey Levy: And then, oh, here you got, you, you got me on the blue. Strange, Julie. And then what happens is then, now we've, we've essentially, uh, dealt with, depending on the type of mold, we could also make it not happy.

Corey Levy: So molds three byproducts, spores, reproductive [00:46:00] gases, m VOCs, part of digestion. Toxins, mycotoxins part of defense. Okay, so now, boom. Right? Yeah. So we, we've now, we've now made it angry, okay? And it's gonna come back and we've given it a food source water, okay? To grow back properly. And so you've now created a, this, this, uh, recipe will rethink visually.

Corey Levy: It's made it look pretty for now. But we've never actually gotten down to the source of it. And here's the thing about killing something. Okay? If you had a skunk in your wall and you said, Corey, I hear it. I smell it. Can you, can you kill it? Sure. I come out, I find it, I kill it, but I don't remove it.

Julie Michelson: Yeah.

Julie Michelson: Gross.

Corey Levy: Is that smell gonna go away?

Julie Michelson: No.

Corey Levy: No. It's gonna get worse. So now we're killing mold spores, which just means that those spores can't grow more mold. But. It's still allergenic, still has the toxins [00:47:00] associated with it. Kind of like a peanut allergy. If somebody eats a peanut off of a tree and then eats a roasted peanut, which can't grow, it's still gonna cause it's still a peanut.

Corey Levy: It's still a peanut. So we're still dealing with the mold spore that now is just dead and can't grow more mold, but still can have that reaction

Julie Michelson: and still make you sick. Yeah,

Corey Levy: exactly.

Julie Michelson: And, and my two like non-technical. Additional issues with the whole bleach and mold thing is a, once it's visually gone, people mistakenly think, I don't have a problem.

Julie Michelson: So they stop investigating and dealing. And then B bleach is not good for you? Yeah. Like if you already have a stressed immune system. Yeah. And you're already compromised, like you don't, you don't wanna be doing it.

Corey Levy: No, you don't want to be doing it. You also gotta be careful if you're combining other chemicals of cleaning in the area, right?

Corey Levy: Because, yeah, not a lot of stuff has [00:48:00] bleach in it. So some are based with ammonia that can create other types of harmful gases to carry in the environment. And I, I get it. We've been, you know, I. The, the, the companies that create bleach products have done a really great job even selling us on the fact that, oh, that's just a little bit of mildew.

Corey Levy: Go ahead and use this product. Right,

Julie Michelson: right.

Corey Levy: But here's guys, here's the, here's the thing, right? Mildew is mold. Mildew and mold are the same thing, right? Yeah. And at the end of the day, like if you were to test that and send what is considered mildew to a lab and a shower, it's gonna come back as a type of mold.

Corey Levy: Right, right. And so, look, there's varying degrees of this and you know, is that actually the driver to what's going on with your health? Maybe or maybe not. Right? Throwing bleach on it is not the right way to handle that type of situation. Um, you know, there's other more natural based products that you can clean with, right?

Corey Levy: Time [00:49:00] oil is a huge antifungal, and it doesn't have this like crazy kill rate. So there are things that you can use. A lot of the more natural green cleaning products that exist out there right now mm-hmm. Are a lot better to surface clean with. If you're seeing a a, maybe I have some buildup in my grout in my shower and I just want to kind of clean, 'cause water sits.

Corey Levy: Sure. Right. Fine. Um, but please don't use bleach. Thank you.

Julie Michelson: If there's anything you take

Corey Levy: away from this call,

Julie Michelson: don't use bleach. So we are at, and that could have been it, we're at that point where, um, I ask you for one step that listeners can take starting today, and it, it doesn't even have to be air quality related.

Julie Michelson: Anything you wanna share with us that we should all be doing or can be incorporating to support health?

Corey Levy: Yeah. So I am gonna leave on the air quality side 'cause I think it's so important. We take 20. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here. [00:50:00] Uh, we take 20, here's just an imagination. You take 20,000 breaths a day.

Corey Levy: Okay. And, uh, I listened to a show you did recently where you talked a lot about like diet and how diet tends to be this kind of low hanging fruit that we can change quickly and fast. Right. A lot of times that's where we start. But we can also start with giving our home a bit of a diet, right? Yes. And that means.

Corey Levy: Let's keep clutter down to a minimum as much as we can. Right? I talked a little bit about this before of this, all these things that get into the air, not just mold spores, but you've got dust mites. And our dust is like a, a soup of contaminants. It's hair particles and skins. It's, you don't wanna breathe this stuff in.

Corey Levy: Okay? So we wanna keep dust to a minimum. So making sure we don't have a lot of areas where dust can form easily and build up. And so decluttering when you're cleaning your home, having a regular cleaning regimen, you're [00:51:00] vacuuming with hepa filtered vacuums is really important. And when you're dusting, you're dusting with items that don't re aerosolize or don't go around with one of those feather dusters of your home.

Corey Levy: And that's just moving it all around, right? You wanna make sure that you're getting stuff that's trapping. And then the final thing that I'll say to like, just overall reduction on exposure is air purification is really important, right? And, you know, we don't drink unfiltered water, right? Um, and our homes are systems, right?

Corey Levy: And there's always something and it's closed air that's looping. So bringing in air filtration is important too. Making sure that it's a minimum HEPA filter base. But there's a lot of really great, uh, uh, brands out there. From Air talker to Healthway, to IQ air, uh, to Austin Air that are all really great products that you can bring in.

Julie Michelson: Amazing ama. I knew I knew your one thing was gonna be, but, but air quality is one thing. Air, air quality is one [00:52:00] thing, but I, I love that. It is just even the. Focusing, first of all, notice and then, and you know, keeping the clutter down, um, is, is huge. It, it really is. And, and so, um, and then all of those other things that we could be doing on a regular basis are, are so, so important.

Julie Michelson: Um. Where is for people that aren't gonna check the links in the show notes, where is the best place to find you? Or some of your resources?

Corey Levy: Yeah, yeah. So yes, we inspect.com is the best place to find anything about us. We have resources on there. We've got, um, a ton of blogs that you can check through and free guides and all of the fun things.

Corey Levy: Um, and then. If you're on Instagram at Mold Finders is my, uh, my business partner's name is Brian Carr. Um, he runs our Instagram [00:53:00] account. He is constantly putting out tips and tricks for the house. Uh, so that's another really great one. And then if you're interested in the dust test, you can find it on yes, we inspect.com.

Corey Levy: But the dust test.com is really, uh, another place to get that screening tool directly too. Um, but amazing. Check the show notes out because I'm gonna put a, I'm gonna give Julie a bunch of really great things to put in the, in the links below.

Julie Michelson: Absolutely. Corey, thank you so much. I listeners like seriously play this 3, 4, 5 times.

Julie Michelson: There's so much packed in this episode. We so appreciate you sharing your expertise and, and your, your clear caring with us really. Yeah. Makes a huge difference.

Corey Levy: Thank you so much.

Julie Michelson: For everyone listening. Remember, you can get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. Hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did.

Julie Michelson: I'll see you next week.