How One Mom Beat a Hidden Mold Infestation—Step by Step! | @the.organimama

episode

Previously titled “How One Mom Beat a Hidden Mold Infestation—Step by Step! | @organimama ” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026

Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark 1h 11m 2 speakers 5 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Kristen Van Gilse (Organimama) 0:00
You're a regular mom who discovered toxic mold in your home. Our home had 600 times the safe level of one of the worst, most toxic molds called catomium globosome. Anywhere that smoke can go, mold spores and mycotoxins can go. If you see or smell something that gets labeled as mildew, that means X. growing mold in your environment. They're exactly the same thing. It's a term that has been used by contractors and landlords for many decades to try and gaslight people into thinking that the serious mold problem in their home is not actually a big deal.
Alex Clark 0:56
In 2022, my guest thought that she was just dealing with a sick baby. What she didn't know was that toxic mold was silently turning her life upside down, making her infant dangerously ill, forcing her out of her home, and wiping out nearly 80% of her belongings. Today, I'm sitting down with Kristin, aka Organimama on Instagram, to talk about how she uncovered the truth, what options actually exist when mold is discovered, and how to support your body through detox and recovery. She learned this the hard way, so you don't have to. Watch this episode on the Real Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Pause and leave a five-star review letting others know how this podcast has impacted your health or your family.
Alex Clark 1:33
Please welcome Kristen, a.k.a. Organa Mama on Instagram to Culture Apothecary. You're a regular mom who discovered toxic mold in your home. What were you seeing in your child that made you think something is not right here?
Kristen Van Gilse (Organimama) 1:48
Well, we already had a non-toxic lifestyle. So we had looked into pretty much all of the different things. We had her tested for allergies. We thought surely she would come back with positive allergy testing. And it was all negative. So we were like, something else has to be happening here that doesn't have to do with toxins in our home or allergies or anything like that. But she was dealing with hives, eczema, food intolerances that we thought maybe were allergies and they weren't allergies. And I thought, what the heck could possibly be causing skin problems in my infant that I can't solve? And that started the entire journey for us.
Alex Clark 2:24
Take us back to the moment where you realized this wasn't just normal sickness. What clicked for you?
Kristen Van Gilse (Organimama) 2:29
I think I started Googling like baby acne when she was a few weeks old. And I even texted a picture of her face to a few of my friends being like, did your babies have this? And some of them said, oh, that's just normal baby acne. But as I'm like on WebMD Googling things, looking up like baby acne and baby eczema, it was clear that this was more than just the normal thing. skin adjusting to the outside environment. Like she was very, very reactive. And then she started having serious reactions to all kinds of foods through my breast milk as I was nursing her. And we couldn't figure out why is she so reactive to all of these foods? I had to cut gluten, dairy, soy, egg, nuts, oats, because she would just break out in hives or horrible rashes when I would ingest those things and then nurse her.
Kristen Van Gilse (Organimama) 3:16
What were the doctors telling you? And what did that make you feel like as a mom? Well, we only really saw an allergist and we also had a holistic nurse practitioner that we saw, but I was already holistically minded enough at that time that we weren't seeing like a pediatrician. And my husband was in medical school, so he had a decent amount of knowledge at the time. And I think both of us, when we kind of put our brains together, we're like, there's more going on here than just normal baby stuff. And our nurse practitioner, when I first mentioned, like, maybe it's an environmental thing. I wonder if we maybe have mold. She was like, I don't know a lot about that, but you definitely could be onto something there.
Alex Clark 3:51
Were you ever made to feel like you were overreacting?
Kristen Van Gilse (Organimama) 3:54
Because we weren't really interacting with a pediatrician, not really from the medical community, but by our friends, there definitely was some of that.
Alex Clark 4:02
They were like, this is your first baby.

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