Natalie was 27 years old when she signed up for Quantify, after struggling for a year with systemic joint pain that had developed seemingly out of nowhere.
The pain had started in her knees, making it difficult for her to walk, but soon progressed to her shoulders, hands, and wrists, further compromising her ability to move and function normally.
Her primary care doctor had ordered a complete blood count (CBC), comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), and antinuclear antibody (ANA) to try to figure out what was going on, but when all of her test results came back normal, he didn’t offer to order any additional tests, and instead suggested that she try physical therapy.
Six months later, however, when physical therapy didn’t help—if anything, her joint pain had gotten worse—Natalie decided to pursue a more data-driven approach.
In her first appointment at Quantify, Natalie’s health coach recommended a mycotoxins test, to evaluate her exposure to toxic mold.
Test results
Her first time testing for environmental factors, Natalie’s mycotoxins test showed significant exposure to Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Fusarium genera, some of the most common types of toxic mold that can cause joint pain, fatigue, brain fog, and other chronic symptoms.
Not just a lucky guess, her health coach had recommended the test after hearing that Natalie’s joint pain started just a few months after moving into a new apartment.
Validating her test results, Natalie’s landlord hired a mold inspector, who soon found the culprit: shoddy grout work in the shower of the apartment immediately above hers, causing water to enter and stagnate within the infrastructure of the building, and ultimately causing mold to grow behind the walls unchecked.
While Natalie hadn’t considered the possibility that her symptoms could be caused by mold in her apartment, now that she had both test results that showed significant exposure and confirmation by a mold inspector that her apartment was the source, she started noticing an unusual, musty smell that she hadn’t paid any attention to previously.
Her apartment had been newly renovated prior to her moving in, so everything looked new, and the appearance of newness had perhaps distracted her from the possibility that her symptoms could caused by her living environment.
Further evaluation of the extent of mold colonization revealed that remediating the apartment would require replacing walls, ceilings, and floors in multiple rooms, so it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to stay.
She cancelled her lease (with no pushback from her landlord) and moved out of the apartment a week later to stay with a friend, while searching for a new place.
Recovery
Within a month of leaving her apartment, Natalie started to feel better.
Not only had she left a toxic environment, but she also started following her health coach’s recommendations to eliminate processed foods, sugar, grains, and dairy from her diet, drink at least 64 ounces of water per day, take certain supplements, such as activated charcoal, milk thistle, and NAC, and use a sauna at least once per week.
A year later, her joint pain had completely resolved, she had moved into a new apartment with better construction, and a follow-up mycotoxins test showed no detectable mold exposure, further validating the work she had done to address an often overlooked factor in complex chronic illness.