In this episode Dr Kevin Conners talks with JW Biava of Immunolytics. JW is a Chemical Engineer, Certified Mold Inspector, and Certified Mold Remediation Contractor with over 20 years of experience in environmental laboratories. His passion for helping people diagnose and correct mold-related issues stems from his susceptibility to mold, which has created numerous health symptoms throughout his life. Through ImmunoLytics JW has assisted thousands of individuals regain their health, and we are happy to carry their extremely affordable test kits in our store (link below.)

Relevant Links

Mold Test Kit by Immunolytics

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Transcript

Dr. Conners
Hello everybody this is Dr.Kevin Conners for another episode of Conners Clinic live. Today’s guest is JW Biava. He is a great addition to our clinic, that his company has provided us with a way to detect people, for our patients to detect mold in their homes, where that can be kind of an insidious state. Where do I have a mold issue? Is that health problem or certainly even if it isn’t the major cause of your health problem, it could be a contributor. So JW is going to talk to us about some exciting things and products that he has that are really, really affordable that you can detect if mold is an issue in your house. Please highly recommend that everybody do this. This is so important because that little spark of a biotoxin in your body could spark this. It’s just this problematic chronic inflammation in our body. So if JW has got a lot to say about this, we’re going to have him back several times or again. If you like this, make sure you hit the “like” button, share it on Facebook, share it on Twitter. And if you’re on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and hit that little alarm notification so you don’t miss any of our coming episodes. So let’s jump right in with JW.

Dr. Conners
Hello again, Dr. Kevin Conners. I’m here with JW Biava. I met you at a seminar, recent toxicology type seminar, when I saw a booth of yours that you do measuring of mold in people’s houses and that interested me greatly. Your costs were extremely reasonable and that is always an issue with people is that, you know, how do I know if I have mold in my environment? In the current environment, it’s hard to know if you had mold in your past environment because you could have mold when you, you know, exposure when you were nine years old and it’d be affecting your health now at 40. And you can’t necessarily go back and test that environment. But if you have current exposure to toxins, mold being one of them, that’s going to affect your health. So we want to be able to measure that and that’s what your company does so well. So explain to me, first of all what, what your company does.

JW Biava
Sure. Yeah, you nailed it. So we specialize in doing kind of a litmus test to see if the mold within your environment could be affecting your health. And so we liked the principle of “keep it simple” and what we use is just a basic auger plate like you’d use in any biology lab charged with SAB rod dextrose, auger. It’s a one hour exposure to see if there’s any potential amplified mold growth in your, the air that you’re breathing, whether that’s your home school, work, car. And then we take it a step further in that you can do some tap testing where you’re tap testing materials to see if they could be affecting your health. And that could be fabric goods, like couches, clothing, pets, animal mounts, seats in your car, carpeting, anything that could be producing or storing the mold, that then your breathing and being exposed to.

Dr. Conners
So we have some of your kits now in our store and we’re using them. I got to do a test of my house. My staffs are all doing tests on their houses and their environments because of ill health things that they’re dealing with. And we just want to try to decrease this overall exposure of anything that could be an injury to a person’s health. And that’s, that’s the secret. So, how did you get into this? What was the thing that, the impetus that got you down this line?

JW Biava
Boy, you know, that I, it’s hard to even pinpoint when the story begins because, you know, when I look back, I now know that I was mold exposed throughout my life. Growing up in Oklahoma, visiting my grandparents that had lots of water leaks and I was very, very sick most of my life until really just a couple of years ago when I finally, the detox got me down to where my immune system can handle toxins. So there was kind of a background foundation of illness in my life. When I was 13 years old, I started working for my uncle and dad in the largest laboratory in the Southwest called SCI laboratories to buy my grandpa’s BMW from my uncle. And so from 13 years old on, I was in the environmental testing arena. I decided to go to college to get a chemical engineering degree with an environmental emphasis knowing I was going to come back and run the laboratory. So when I came back, I was running the laboratory doing basic air water, soil testing, our laboratory started in 1980 really doing aspestos and then advanced into various air quality, indoor air quality, industrial hygiene type testing. So when I had, I’d say it was about 17, 18 years ago, we really started to understand mold was the majority of the impact in indoor air quality, industrial hygiene. It was really starting to be understood. During that time, my current wife, she wasn’t my wife at the time, her and her five year old daughter were deathly ill and we determined it was from mold. And so the quest to keep myself well and to help my, my wife and daughter really has advanced me down this path. So we spun off immuno Lytics from Astrodye. So the Immuno Lytics laboratory, specializes in doing mold testing really in the medical arena for doctors and their patients that are concerned that the environment may be contributing to their disease state, whatever that may be.

And so we’ve been doing that testing now for many, many years trying to fine tune it, with this between cost and information. So there’s lots of tests to do mold, but we believe this is the best bang for the buck where you’re actually able to test the most areas. So hopefully the more tests you take, more samples you collect, the more likely you are to find the mold problem. And also to kind of identify where the source may be. And you know, we have clients that even $68 for two mold tests is too much for them. So that’s why we introduced just buying the plates for $3 a piece and just setting them out, see if you have mold. Our attention really is to try and have a solution for everybody. Everybody can do some form of testing and get an indication of if their environment’s affecting their health. Cause as you well know, you got to have clean water, clean food and clean air. That’s really how you, how you survive and how you really prosper. And so we focus on that airside

Dr. Conners
So it was probably about 20 years ago or so that’s still in the medical community, was kind of poo-pooing mold as an issue until some research came out that just confirmed, you know, it’d be out of the shadow of a doubt. And then the problem comes into how do you confirm that the person’s problem is caused by mold. That’s where testing like this could be so beneficial. So, we’ve used tests in the past from different companies that were more costly and came with less of a data readout. That’s what interested me in your company, so I’m excited to get this in the hands of our patients. Now you talk about air quality and I liked the term that you used. I didn’t write it down, but what did you say for air quality? The indoor…

JW Biava
Oh , Indoor air quality or industrial hygiene?

Dr. Conners
Industrial hygiene. I like that term. Because we talk a lot about hygiene is really the cause of people living longer as opposed to, you know, the vaccination or the introduction of medicines though there’s benefit to those as well, but it is really plumbing, that internal hygiene that has increased the life expectancy of people. But one of the problems that we have with sealing up our environment is that mold can get trapped behind the walls that you can’t see. Right? I have a good friend, that was about eight years ago, that he and his wife nearly died. They had built a brand new home and there was just a drip leak in their bathroom plumbing behind the wall, which was the adjacent wall to their bedroom, could see no mold on the outside. Finally, they are so sick, they decided to tear that sheet rock down the entire thing, studs, everything were just rotted with black mold So this is something that this can pick up. That’s how they actually picked it up as well, through it auger plate. But mold came up super high, though they couldn’t smell it, you know. So speak a little bit to that, where you got this hidden sources.

JW Biava
Well, that’s, that’s very accurate that most often it’s hidden sources. So the, the real problem is, you know, that we use building materials and building techniques that make our homes and offices into incubators. So, you know, we have perfect food sources and drywall and two by fours and insulation as paper backing and all the food sources there. All it needs is a little water to grow. Cause of course mold is ubiquitous in the environment. It’s everywhere. And so it’s there you put a little water on some organic material and it starts to grow. That interstitial space, the wall space and ceiling space is the, really the primary problem because you can’t see it. You don’t know it’s there and see you can’t address it. You know, if you have mold growing on the inside, the livable space side of the drywall, it’s easy to diagnose, finding and take care of it. You know, I tell people all the time, if you see visible mold, you don’t need a test. You know, you’re going to remove it under proper conditions. Now, after you remove it, you may want to test to assure that you did the job properly. But, the, the testing is really for those hidden areas is to characterize your environment and see if there is something somewhere that you don’t know about. To give you an example, I sold a house and in between I rented this little house and it looked great. They had just remodeled. It looked great, but man, I was getting sick in it and my wife now and daughter, they were getting sick in it. I said, man, what’s going on? So after good rain, I took my infrared camera and I went into the house and it was a flat roof house, which was mistake number one. I found 13 different roof leaks that never manifested inside of the house. So the water was leaking onto the drywall and insulation in the ceiling, but not coming through the drywall. And some mold was growing in that interstitial ceiling space and making us sick and we just couldn’t see it, so we didn’t know. So all of us battled this, I mean, even in my current house, I bought a house and spent a ton of money just perfecting it for my family with the best HVAC systems, verse 16, filters, air purification systems, you name it. Just a really great system. And yet, the previous owner, when they had this, piping put together for this wet bar, they didn’t glue the piping. They just kind of pressed it together and same thing, it developed a real slow leak and the back bathroom that was kind of adjacent to the kitchen was growing a ton of Stachybotrys. So without the testing, I wouldn’t have known that.

Dr. Conners
And that’s black mold what you just said that can really kill a person.

JW Biava
Sure. And none of us are immune. Even in the industry, I still fight mold problems.

Dr. Conners
Yeah. And it’s just like you said, it is ubiquitous. It’s something that is everywhere. What brought a lot of it to light with me, it was about 15, 20 years ago, I heard this, a PhD researcher from the University of Toronto, I can’t remember his name, but he was a expert in mold and he was hired by the Canadian government to go around to different areas where they’re having health issues. And he had his slide presentation that he gave us. He gave us pictures of where you’d find mold. And one of the things that he drilled into us was that any crawl spaces cause mold is going to come up from the ground everywhere, you know, see it outside all the time, but air will carry it away. You get that air flow that never causes any health concerns. But when you have at a crawl space that it just, all it could do is go up, start growing on the floor joistes. And that’s part of the issue again with our construction. We were so involved with trying to save heat or save air conditioning costs that we don’t want to open the windows and gets some air flow through our house and that can be a real major breeding grounds I guess then too.

JW Biava
Sure. And you know, really addressing mold problems is very simple in principle, it’s kind of a little difficult to implement sometimes, but the first is you have to remove the source. There is no substitute for source removal. You can’t do enough filtration or enough treatment to address a large mold problem. But if you remove the source, that’s 90% of the battle. After that, you’ve got to ventilate. You’ve got to dilute out the toxins, the pollutants, the mold, and you know, in our neck of the woods, it’s easy to do with ERV systems, the energy recovery ventilators, where you’re bringing in a hundred percent outside air, exhausting out the same amount and the path crosses so that your recover your energy, those work wonderfully here. I know I have a good friend in Kentucky who put one in and he ran it on high with 95% humidity outside, the duct work started dripping, as he brought in too much humidity. So, you know, I throw that caveat in there cause you have to be a little careful with how you introduce fresh air. You can create a problem by doing it, but then dilution, you just bring in fresh air, opening windows is great, but nobody keeps their windows open 24 hours a day. And since the buildings are sealed up so tight, it’s real nice to it to bring in air. A lot of environmental biologists, they’ll recommend positive pressure HVAC systems where you’re bringing in some fresh air into your actual air conditioning or heating and distributing that throughout the house in a way in which you’re bringing in more than you’re pushing out. And so it creates kind of a positive pressure. That’s great. But most of us can’t afford to modify our HVAC system.

Dr. Conners
Really costly.

JW Biava
Oh sure. So you’ve got to find some way to increase dilution of the toxins, whether that’s opening windows, using some type of exhaust fans with control coming in, the DRB assist or whatever it is. You’ve got to dilute out the pollutants. And then way down the list would be filtration and treatment. So you remove the source, you dilute those are the best things you can do. But if you really want to Polish it off, good HEPA filters or air purifiers or some of the fogging treatments, botanical fogging treatments, those are all wonderful ways to polish off your environment. But really if you can remove the source and you can dilute out the toxins inside, you’ve got most of the problem.

Dr. Conners
Well, I want to have you back out again. We can talk about those solutions. Right now we’ve got to find out for people if it is an issue in their house. So getting people to order the kits is important. You could get them right from your website. We sell them for the same costs on our website as well. Really important to do that testing because you could not have any smell of mold or “I don’t think I have mold, it doesn’t smell like mold. I’ve checked behind the toilet, I’ve checked everywhere.” But it can be in the sheet rock, because anywhere there’s paper, like you said, it’s get a wake up water and then that is a source of growth that is an incubator in itself. So we want to test for mold and I’d like to get all my patients tested for mold, that’s why I was so glad that of how inexpensive your product and the testing and the report that you get for that and a the consultation that you guys give with every testing is just fantastic business practice. I applaud you for that.

JW Biava
Well, thank you. You know, and let me point out there too, that yeah, 50% of what we do is the testing. The other 50% is on the consultation. So we don’t ever want to tell somebody, “Hey, you have a problem. Good luck.” We want to say, “Hey, you have a problem. Here’s some steps you could take to improve your environment” and try and point them down a path. And sometimes that path is, you know, call an inspector to really find the source of moisture. Sometimes it’s as simple as dilution or improvement, filtration, cleaning up carpets, things like that. But we really try and help people down that path.

Dr. Conners
That’s great. Yeah. Would you be willing to come back on, we can talk about some solutions?

JW Biava
Yeah, of course. Of course. Anytime. Yeah.

Dr. Conners
Thanks, JW. I appreciate all your insight, your knowledge, and really appreciate what your company is doing for people and improving health of my patients too.

JW Biava
We appreciate it yeah, we’re here for you. Whatever you need.

Dr. Conners
All right. Thanks again.

JW Biava
Yes, sir. Thanks. Bye.