Natalie was 27 years old when her joint pain started.
Just a few months prior, she had moved into a new apartment—her first time living without roommates—and was excited to finally have a place to herself.
The thrill of feeling like she was moving up in the world came to an abrupt end, however, when she started struggling to get out of bed in the morning.
While she’d experienced burnout in college, pushing herself to keep up with the increasing demands of her coursework with caffeine-fueled all-nighters in the library, this was an entirely different level of fatigue.
This was a level of fatigue that didn’t resolve, regardless of how much she slept, and that stuck with her all day.
And, as if that wasn’t enough, around the same time, what started as an occasional twinge of pain in her knees soon developed into chronic, unrelenting pain in her shoulders and wrists, as well, exacerbated by movement.
“It’s as if I’ve aged 50 years in three months,” she tried to explain to her primary care doctor, after all of her test results came back normal.
“This is the worst I’ve ever felt in my life, and it all happened so quickly.”
Physical therapy
“You could try physical therapy,” her doctor suggested, implying that her joint pain could be attributed to a musculoskeletal imbalance.
That she suddenly developed joint pain due to a musculoskeletal imbalance didn’t make sense to Natalie, but her doctor didn’t have any other ideas, and she was desperate for anything that might help, so she accepted his offer to refer her to a physical therapist.
For the next six months, Natalie did every kind of exercise that her physical therapist recommended, for her shoulders, knees, and wrists, never missing a day.
Despite her commitment to physical therapy, however, her joint pain didn’t improve—if anything, it had gotten worse—and she was getting increasingly frustrated with the significant time and energy investment that obviously wasn’t providing any benefit.
And her fatigue hadn’t improved either, further reinforcing that she needed to look elsewhere.
Enter Quantify
Searching for help, Natalie eventually learned about Quantify in a Facebook Group for people with mystery symptoms.
One of the members reported that Quantify had helped him to recover from debilitating fatigue and joint pain, among other symptoms, after years of getting nowhere with the medical system.
Natalie was intrigued by this member’s story, and hoped that Quantify could help her, too, to figure out why her symptoms developed, and what she could do to resolve them.
After getting matched with a certified health coach, completing a health questionnaire, and meeting with her health coach over video chat, a mycotoxins test was ordered for Natalie, to evaluate her exposure to toxic mold.
Quite different from her prior experience with laboratory tests, Natalie was able to easily conduct the test at home, by collecting a urine sample in a test kit, and shipping to a lab for analysis.
Mold toxicity
A few weeks later, she received her test results, and her health coach explained that her results showed significant exposure to Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Fusarium genera—some of the most common types of toxic mold—and that the mold was likely colonized somewhere in her apartment, given that her symptoms had started soon after she moved in.
To address mold toxicity, her health coach continued, Natalie would need to identify the source of exposure, and, if unable to be remediated completely, she would need to move out of her apartment, while also taking steps to support immune function and detoxification of mycotoxins, the toxins produced by mold.1 2 3
Thrilled to get answers, yet also horrified that her new apartment was making her sick, Natalie called her landlord to report her findings and request that he hire a mold inspector to help her identify the source of her exposure.
After a comprehensive search through her apartment and adjacent apartments, the inspector 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.
Remediation
Natalie hadn’t considered the possibility that her symptoms could be caused by mold in her apartment, because she couldn’t see any obvious evidence of mold colonization.
But 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 had also closely followed her health coach’s recommendations to eliminate processed foods, grains, and dairy from her diet, take certain supplements, such as activated charcoal, milk thistle, and NAC, exercise every day, and use a sauna at least once per week.
A year later, she had moved into a new apartment with better construction, and her fatigue and joint pain had completely resolved.
Reflecting on what had felt like a nightmare at the time, Natalie reported that she actually felt grateful for the experience, now on the other side, given how much she had learned about her health.