Dhru Purohit Show - 70% of Homes Have Mold: Here’s Why It’s An Issue And Why We Need to Protect Our Kids from Mold Toxicity

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Pique Life and Hollow Socks. An estimated 70% of U.S. homes contain at least one mold species. And, while mold has always been part of our environment, something has shifted. Mold toxicity is showing up more often, more intensely, and in ways past generations simply didn’t experience.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, we’re revisiting one of our most talked-about moments with Dr. Pejman Katiraei. Dr. Katiraei shares why today’s “toxic soup” environment makes mold far more disruptive than it used to be, and why kids are uniquely vulnerable. We explore how to recognize mold-related issues, how to think about mold in the larger context of chronic illness, and what steps parents can take if their child or they themselves have unexplained symptoms that don’t improve despite healthy habits. Whether you’re struggling with mysterious health issues or simply want a clearer understanding of what may be happening inside your home and your body, this conversation is an essential starting point. Dr. Pejman Katiraei is a board-certified pediatrician with advanced training in integrative and holistic medicine. After completing his undergraduate studies at UCLA and earning his osteopathic degree from Western University, he trained in pediatrics at Loma Linda University, where he later served as Chief Resident and faculty while founding the Wholistic Medicine Clinic. One of the few physicians skilled in osteopathy, functional medicine, endocrinology, and medical herbalism, Dr. Katiraei now practices in Santa Monica.  In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Katiraei dive into: Why a threat we’ve lived with forever is suddenly wreaking havoc (3:01) Environmental toxins and how they’re reshaping our biology (8:50) The unexpected symptoms in parents that often point to hidden mold exposure (17:22) The deeper story: where mold really fits in the modern health puzzle (21:41) Final revelations and insights that bring the whole picture together (28:03) Also mentioned: Full episode with Dr. Pejman Katiraei Try This: How Indoor Air Quality Impacts Your Brain And What to Do About It This episode is brought to you by Pique Life and Hollow Socks. Right now, Pique Life is offering 20% off their Sun Goddess Matcha. Plus, you’ll get a free beaker and frother when you go to piquelife.com/dhru. For a limited time, Hollow Socks is offering my community a Buy 2, Get 2 Free Sale. Head to HollowSocks.com for up to 50% off your order. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. You might be surprised to learn that an estimated 70% of homes in the United States contain at least one species of mold. And while humans have always lived with mold, mold toxicity is dramatically more common, more intense than past generations experience. Which is why I'm so passionate about sharing information with my audience about this growing problem. And why I wanted to share a portion of my conversation with my dear friend, Dr. Pedgeman Katerai,

on this topic with you today. Dr. Pedgeman is a board certified pediatrician who is also boarded and fellowship trained in integrative medicine. He completed his undergraduate at UCLA and obtained his osteopathic medical degree at Western University Health Sciences. He completed a pediatric residency at Loma Linda University, where he stayed on as a teaching faculty member for over four years. Dr. Pedgeman is now in private practice in Santa Monica, where he focuses on helping children with severe behavioral challenges, many who have been impacted by mold. He's also working with an amazing team to build out. holistic minds, an online portal that helps parents understand the root of their child's behavioral issues and what steps they can take to help resolve them. In today's episode, Dr. Pedgeman and I

explore the most common mold-related symptoms, why it's a growing problem today, how our modern environment has created a toxic soup for many people, including kids, and why kids today are more impacted than previous generations, and how to put mold in context without jumping to extremes. So if you or anybody in your family has ever thought that mold might be impacting your health. Today's episode is for you. Let's dive in. Mold has been an issue that we've dealt with as our modern human species since the, since as long as homo sapiens have been there and probably even, you know, before that, right?

I'm saying homo sapiens because of written history. In fact, one of my friends, Dr. Ann Shippey, who also is, you know, somebody deeply in the mold space and has been on this podcast before. reminded me that, you know, mold was even talked about in the Bible and how problematic it is and how important it is to address it. In what capacity? I have no idea, but I'll take her word for it, right? So if mold has been an issue that humans have been dealing with for quite some time, and let's fast forward that to our modern industrial age where most humans are living, most people in the Western world, let's say that, are living in structures and

buildings that could develop mold inside of them through, you know, water exposure, you know, modern plumbing is a big issue, leaky pipes, right? Those are the main sort of things like water exposure, leaky pipes, from my understanding, unremediated or unattended to, you know, drywall or other things that are there. Why does it seem that it's more of an issue for this generation that's growing up? and you may not have an answer, but I'm asking you to maybe to think about it a little bit and not the generation before them,

who also kind of grew up in homes and buildings and closed structures where you would think they would have just as much exposure to mold as the generation that's growing up now. Any thoughts on that? I do. I do. Great question. So there's multiple pieces to it.

First and foremost, when you look at how molds affect the system, and then you add to that glyphosates and you add to that PCBs and you add to that BPA and you add to that other environmental toxicans. For instance, glyphosates and mold toxins, when you look at their physiological impacts, they're actually very, very, very similar. They actually cause harm, they harm the microbiome. They hit the gastrointestinal tract. They hit the liver and the detox pathways. They affect the nervous system.

So my mentor, Dr. Neil Nathan, actually talks about this in his book, Toxic, that we believe that what happened, what is one of the things that have happened is we have the existing toxic load. And we know, sadly, all human beings, newborns coming into the world. I'm sure you know of the EWG study, you know, everyone has exposure. We can't escape it. Living in the world today, we are exposed. Even if you're eating organic foods, you still have some degree of glyphosate exposure. All of these environmental toxic. Toxicans create a certain stress onto the human body.

They create a certain vulnerability. Now, my observation is that all of these toxicans create that load, but that load is not yet enough to break the system. Now, when you add the 500-pound gorilla on top of that load, all of a sudden the systems that were still functioning, you know, they had some vulnerability. The microbiome wasn't perfect, but it wasn't falling apart. the gastrointestinal track was maybe a little off, but nothing bad. The mycotoxins, when the exposure is high enough, long enough, especially early enough, that's like the 500-pound gorilla that comes and sits on that load and then suddenly breaks it. So you've got the total toxic load with the mycotoxins pushing that toxic load

way beyond what our physiological buffering capacity or tolerance capacity is. Then you get into building science. So think about 50 years ago or even 20 years ago. We didn't have this kind of energy efficiency, right? Buildings. Buildings were way more leaky. They leaked. Yeah.

And not water. We're talking about air. Like air would come in. They were heating and HVAC systems and cooling. Like they weren't as tight. Not at all. As they are today. In fact, you know, getting lead certified often means that you have a building that's like totally

unbreatable. So is that by what you mean by leaking? Exactly. Yes. Okay, got it. Yes. So you're saying building standards and the fact that we're trying to make our buildings more green by making them energy efficient in a way has created more of a protection layer for the mold

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Get started at peaklife.com slash Drew for 20% off sitewide for life. Again, that's peak, P-I-Q-U-E-L-E-L-E-L-I-E-L-E-L-I-E. F-I-F-E dot com slash Drew. That's me, D-H-R-U. Slow down, sit mindfully, and glow from the inside out with Peake's sun goddess matcha. Well, it's a protection layer. And there was this really amazing publication that actually talked about how through this energy efficiency, we have created buildings that have the potential to become more toxic.

Not that they are inherently more toxic. But now because you've got this completely closed system that does not. breathe at all if there's some kind of contamination, whether it's, you know, you put down carpet and it's, or whatever, something is off gassing or paint or in this case of mold, all of those toxins recirculate continuously in the home. So let's say you've got a tiny little leak, you don't even see it. And prior, you know, 40 years ago, because the building was constantly breathing, these mold toxins wouldn't concentrate into the environmental the same way they do now.

They would get diluted by some fresh air being leaked in and then the moldy air being leaked out. Is that what you're saying? Yes. And some of the environmental experts that have been teaching me, like one of the things they say is if you're worried about having mold contamination in your home, open your windows as much as you can to get fresh air in because that actually dilutes the concentrations of these mold toxins and allows them to kind of be moved out of the home.

So we've got that. We also have drywall. So it turns out that up until the 1950s, U.S. homes and most homes in North America were billed with plaster. Plaster is basically concrete, which actually happens to be resilient to mold. So if plaster gets wet, it doesn't get moldy as quickly. Not to say there weren't mold issues in the old homes. There were still mold issues for sure. It turns out that drywall, because drywall is basically paper, paper, paper.

and calcium carbonate, I think, is sandwiched together. Paper that's in drywall comes from tree bark. It turns out that tree bark actually has mold spores in the bark. And it turns out that drywall has some amount of mold spores actually just built into it. So when you add water to drywall, you can quickly get mold contamination because as soon as that drywall gets wet, presuming you don't have the fancy. moisture mold resistant, you know, green drywalls or whatever they are. But most common drywall, once that sucker gets wet, it can develop mold contamination quite easily within a few days. And this is the environmental experts that I've talked to teaching me that. And there's studies that look at that.

So our building methodology has also changed over the last several decades. And combination of these things, the closed systems, the drywall, you know, sadly nowadays, construction, you know, techniques are not as good as they used to be because a lot of builders are just trying to throw up homes as fast as they can, right? So sometimes they'll cut corners here and there just to cut down cost. All of this combined with the total toxic load is part of the issue. The other part of the issue is the food supply. So, corn, grains, a lot of these different foods are now stored in silos. They've been stored in silos forever, right?

As we've had climate change in humidity levels, heat levels have changed. All of these grains that are sitting in these silos sometimes for months actually can become moldy. And those grains are then fed to the animals and we consume the milk. We consume the meat of these animals, which means we get exposed to this. Now, people say, well, the FDA regulates that and we don't have, we can't have mold contamination in the food and it can't cause a problem. That's until you actually look at the FDA regulations and the guidelines. And it turns out that certain mold toxins like okotoxin, I think gliotoxin and one of the other mold toxins are actually not regulated at all, at all. Like, we don't, if it's there, it's not being controlled, which also means that these toxins are getting into the food supplies.

So you've got the food supply having mold and with environmental change, studies have started hinting at the possibility that these grains are becoming more moldy. Animals are getting the mold, passing it onto us. So we've got that load. We've got the toxic load from glyphosate, pesticides, whatever, coming up. You've got the building science, the drywall. And then when you add all of that together, all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's why it's becoming a problem. So you believe, to summarize it here, that we are living in a toxic soup that's increasingly gotten more concentrated, which is one of the reasons that we're seeing in the case of pediatrics and the type of kids that you get a chance to work with, with these allergies, issues that maybe adults would be having, but they're having these gastrointestinal issues. severe mitochondrial dysfunction, it's the concentration and how early those kids,

even in some cases being in utero, right, on their way to being born, they're growing up in a much more concentrated toxic soup, which is why some of the kids that are out there in your belief are right from the get, sometimes right away coming into this world, dealing with such, I don't know any other better way to say it, but crazy symptoms and diseases. Yeah. Yeah. And the most significant contributor to that toxic soup being the mold toxins.

A way to look at this is, I used to have an old Prius, I can bash on Priuses. My Prius at a certain point, you know, was not running in top form. You know, it would take it a while to get going. and, you know, there were little issues with it. So imagine a car that's, you know, not the highest performing car to begin with. And the engine is a little off. And, you know, the transmission is a little off. So it's already a little off.

And now a 500-pound gorilla comes and sits in the backseat. And all of a sudden, you know, within a few months, that car that was still running okay, all of a sudden starts breaking down. The engine breaks down. The transmission breaks down. That's the level of additional toxic load that this exposure. can bring. So we do live in a toxic soup and we should do everything possible to mitigate that toxic soup. What I see, especially in our, you know, more aware, holistic community, right,

those those that are aware of eating organic and are aware of living cleanly and aware of, you know, not spraying your home with X, Y, or Z, cleaners, et cetera, to mitigate that exposure. That is all great. But we're focusing so much on this and we're missing. the 500-pound gorilla. I have many families that do everything perfectly right. They eat 100% organic. Every single cleaner they use is all organic, all clean, everything is clean, everything is clean.

Even then, if the mold exposure is there, that's enough to cause the system to develop problems. And that's how significant this is. So for all of the viewers out there, they're doing all of these things right, and they're wondering why in God's good earth is my health, my kids' health. my kids' health being off, this could be one reason. Not the only reason, this could be one reason. And you primarily, you know, you're a pediatrician, so you see kids,

but one of the things that you wanted to make sure that even I understood is that, like, a lot of families whose kids are dealing with this, it's quite often that you see that the parents themselves sometimes have unexplained symptoms. So we're primarily talking about this from the angle of kids because this generation that's growing up right now and, you know, pretty much since the modern building items that you've added more energy efficient buildings, drywall, etc., other stuff, you know, we're seeing more of these complicated situations that you're treating, but there are also parents that deal with this.

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naturally lightweight and breathable and keeps your feet dry without that swampy feeling. And they use graduated compression, which means you get balanced circulation support that helps you reduce soreness, swelling, and that heavy dead leg feeling after long days or tough workouts. You know, whenever I come across a cool product like Hollow, I like to share with my friends and family, so I gave them recently to my brother-in-law who loves to go rucking and spends a lot of time on his feet seeing patients as a medical doctor, and he definitely noticed an improvement in swelling and just feeling less heaviness at the end of the day. And it's not just me and my brother-in-law who love these guys, over two million pairs of these socks have been sold, and they're

also made in the United States and trusted by other doctors as well. For a limited time, Hollow is running a buy-to get-to-free sale. Head over to hollowsox.com. That's hollowsox.com for up to 50% off your order. After checkout, they'll ask where you heard about them. Let them know you heard about hollow socks from the Drew Perot Show to support this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. So, one of One of the things that really has me become paranoid is probably the right word about mold, if nothing else, very concerned is let's say a child has X, Y, or Z thing, all right? And we kind of touched on that. One of the things that I asked to parents is do either of you have, and it could be brain fog or memory issues.

And it's not, you know, dementia horrendous like memory loss. But if parents think back to, let's say, five years ago and their memory is not as sharp as it used to be, they're more forgetful. They're having a hard time remembering things. That's one telltale sign. And this reflects, you know, part of the genetics because they're human beings. They're more resilient to mold toxicity. So it doesn't affect them as badly. And then especially with adults, because our systems are more mature and resilient, we can handle more than little kids.

But a lot of parents are like, yeah, you know, my memory is just none. as good as it used to be. I've just become more forgetful. And every single parent says the same thing. I just chalked it up to being a busy, busy parent, you know, just chasing after the kids or just having too much stress. Every time there's a reason why they've justified their memory issues. The other thing is fatigue. So because of the significant mitochondrial disruption that mycotoxins do, They can actually cause essentially damage to the entire chain of events that these little organelles create energy, right? They make ATP for us. They give us life.

They give us energy. So forth. It turns out that that entire conveyor belt are processes that take place from food broken down to the key pieces that ultimately go into this generator, which spits out electricity, which gives us life. That entire conveyor belt, literally every single part of that process, the electron transport, chain can be hit. So a lot of adults will also say like, yeah, you know, I'm just tired all the time. And I have to drink five cups of coffee and I sleep eight hours, but I still wake up tired. And again, it's like, well, I just chalked it up to just being a really busy parent. So the fatigability, the memory issues are two very common things. Then there are some of the sinus

issues. So allergies, you know, a lot, some parents just have these weird. weird allergies that are there almost all the time. Waking up congested in the mornings, waking up having to clear your throat, coughing a whole bunch. And then one of the things that's interesting, a lot of the parents say, yeah, yeah, you know, when I go on vacation, my allergies go away. And then as soon as I come back home, my allergies come back. Mold exposure. Fibromyalgia, weird aches and pains. So joint pains, muscle pains, neck pains.

And it's not because of anything. It's just it's there and you can't explain it. That is another telltale sign. And then there are the food sensitivities. So, you know, the families where one or multiple people, you know, are reacting to 15 foods. And it's not just a little gluten or dairy. It's like they're reacting to a whole bunch of things. That could be another sign.

So I want to stress test, you know, what you just shared from the audience's perspective. Go for it. Right? when a lot of people who are world-class in their field come on this podcast and talk about, you know, their unique sort of area that they're known for treating. In this case, you're working with kids and mold, right? And you, I've really developed a deep expertise there clinically and have a good understanding of like the literature and what's there.

And then somebody else next week comes on and talks about something else. Let's say like mouth breathing. A lot of times the audience hears. that this one area, heavy metals, in this case mold, in another case, sugar, another case this is the reason that they're having parent or child these unexplained issues. You go online and you can kind of find that sort of narrative with a lot of things. People will say that about vaccines.

People will say it about this, that. And I think from an audience's perspective, they're listening and they're like, okay, I'm paying attention. How do I contextualize this with all? all the other things that people are talking about that are supposedly the root reason that I or my child is suffering from this inexplicable thing. So it's not to say that what you're saying is not true

because there's a lot of truth inside of that. But it's more in the sense of how do we balance out that you're saying that mold is deeply connected to a lot of these things, allergies, sinuses, other stuff, in comparison to all the other insults that the body is going to be going through and the experts who are advocating for that particular area. I love it.

Good point. I think a lot of times we take things out of context. And, you know, part of why I started off with I've run down a lot of rabbit holes is because I have. You know, at one point, I was obsessed with, you know, 100% gluten-free, dairy-free, get rid of sugar. And I'm not saying that those things are good. So people should avoid sugar and they should reduce gluten and dairy because they do cause problems. At one point, I was obsessed with MTHFR and methylation to the point where I was injecting myself with B12 injections eating, like taking, I think at one point, like 10,000 micrograms or 10 milligrams of folate because I thought that would fix me. And I would do that to my patients too.

And like people would go along with me. none of those things ever added up in that kind of a way. For the patients that you were saying? For the patients, clinically. Like every now and then it would work, but it wasn't a slam dunk. And it certainly wouldn't explain all of the weirdness that I was seeing. And I'll give you examples. Like, I was, I still focus a lot on the gut.

Don't get me wrong. I still do the probiotics, you know, the immunoglobulins, all this fancy stuff to fix the gut. in all my kiddos with eczema allergies, gastrointestinal issues, growth problems, I would do all of these things for them, let's say, 10 years ago. 20 or 30% of the time it would work well. 67% of the time it was marginal at best or didn't produce much results. When you look at certain things like, for instance, let's say glyphosates and pesticides, It's not to say that these things are good, and it's not to say that they don't cause problems.

They do cause problems. They're very problematic. Now, you have to understand the degree of exposure to understand how much harm these things can cause. In ordinary everyday life, so those of us that live in suburban, you know, city environments, outside of our food supply, our exposure levels are pretty low. Now, if you lived in an agriculture area. To specifically you're talking about pesticides and glyphicates, right. Okay. Now, you may be spraying some around your house. You may live near a golf course.

Now, in that kind of a setting, let's say your house is here, golf course is here. Every day they're coming along spraying pesticides. Or I have one dear family where I believe they live in Idaho. And it turns out literally across the street from them, there is a farm. And, you know, we kept looking and I was like, is this mold? toxins because this poor guy had all kinds of awful things happening. Gastrointestinal issues, immune reactivity, gut falling apart, mitochondrial markers all over the place. And we kept searching. Their house was actually pretty clean until the mom's like, could it be the farm? I'm like,

so we checked his glyphosate levels. And they were like off the charts, like higher than what I had ever seen in any of my other patients. There are families that drink well water. And their well water is contaminated with all kinds of things, including potentially heavy metal. So it's not to say that these things aren't problems. It's to say that in context, most ordinary people don't have enough exposure to these things to the point where they become the primary causative factor. Unless potentially they're eating a diet of primarily ultra-processed foods where you have significant concentration.

But again, what you're talking about mostly is like healthy-ish. families that are already off ultra-processed foods. They're not dealing with like deep socioeconomic stuff that is like preventing the basic core function of them being able to, you know, show up as a healthy person on a dated basis. So again, we're talking about like healthier families and that's the statement that you're related to. Exactly. And these are the families that I care for.

Right. And I mean, sadly, these are also families that, you know, from across the country you're reaching out in high number saying. We've done everything. We've done everything. We've cut out sugar. We've cut out gluten. We've got out this.

We're doing probiotics. We're eating organic. We've done this. Nothing is working. What the heck is going on? So it's in that context is really the statement, yes. Yeah. So going back to it, and this is where I feel like we can contextualize and personalize this topic,

is that, you know, your original statement in my 14 years of experience as an integrative pediatrician, nothing has caused a greater concern as mold again if we zoom out we see again for the population as a whole for most kids the biggest issues are going to be obesity not that mold can't play a role in that type you know two diabetes you know aka what was used to be called you know juvenile diabetes etc so those things are still there but again we're talking about healthier families whose kids have tried and the families have tried and the parents have tried a lot of different things it's still not working for them. And this is where you're like, you know, you're a clinician that's kind of like waving their hands

and a doctor is waving their hands and saying, guys, listen, I don't know how bad this issue of mold is, but I can tell you it's a lot worse than what we thought it was. We need to pay attention to this a lot more than what we're doing currently in our treatment protocols. A hundred percent. I want to acknowledge how challenging it can be and how confusing it can be to navigate all the symptoms that you or your child might be experiencing, especially if you've been dealing with mold toxicity. And often awareness is the first step towards taking back control of your health and your home.

As we heard today, mold isn't new. But the way we build our homes today, the way we live, the way we store food, has made mold exposure more potent than ever. And for many families who have tried everything, mold may be potentially, the missing piece if you've related to what Dr. Pedgeman has talked about in this conversation. And if this conversation resonated with you, I hope you take it as an invitation to explore this topic more. And if you'd like to listen more, you can listen to the full interview with Dr. Pedgeman, Katerai, in the show notes below, where he talks about patient cases, as well as information about nutrition, supplement support for mold detoxification, and how to find qualified

mold inspectors and mold testing companies. You can find a link to that full episode in the show notes below. And I'm also sharing in the show notes, a link to one of my try-this newsletters about how exploring indoor air quality and how poor indoor air quality impacts your brain and what to do about it. All these newsletters are for free and for informational purposes only. It's not medical advice. I'm not a medical doctor. It's worth checking out because there's a lot of really great recess on there, even if you're not dealing with bold about how to clean up your air. You can find that in the show notes below. And lastly, if there's someone in your life who you think might benefit from this information in today's episode, please consider sharing with you.

them. Okay, until next time, thank you for tuning in.