Podcast Drop Date: 4/19/23
A must listen episode for every household. Tune in to this episode featuring Ryan Blaser, the founder and CEO of Test My Home. Ryan offers a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment for every possible source of harmful toxins in your home environment, such as mold, EMF exposure, water, air and more. His personal wellness journey inspired him to create Test My Home after discovering that his moldy home and lead exposure were causing his unusual health symptoms. What sets Ryan apart is his genuine care for his clients and his ability to provide real solutions. Don't miss out on valuable insights into building biology and healthy home consulting, and how they can positively impact your health and well-being!
Website: https://www.testmyhome.com/
Jaspr Pro: https://ca.jaspr.co/products/jaspr-pro - Use discount code TMH200 to save $200
Transcript:
Amber Warren, PA-C: Welcome to Functional Medicine Foundations podcast, where we explore root cause medicine, engage in conversation with functional and integrative medicine experts and build community with like minded health seekers. I'm your host, Amber Warren. Let's dig deeper.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Welcome back, everybody. I'm here. Amber Warren with Ryan Blaser. So Ryan Blaser is the accomplished founder and CEO of Test My Home, an environmental company dedicated to improving people's health and well-being. As a functional medicine doctor for your home. Ryan uses his expertise in building biology and healthy home consulting to identify and address toxic sources that could be impacting your health. Ryan's extensive educational background in electrical engineering, environmental toxicology and electromagnetic radiation, combined with years of experience in industry such as mold and remediation, construction, nuclear waste cleanup, has given him a deep understanding of the relationship between humans and their built environment. After a personal wellness journey, Ryan founded Test My Home to help others achieve optimal health. He personally experienced the detrimental effects of mold exposure and lead inhalation, which caused unusual and serious health symptoms like fatigue, weight loss and brain fog. After unsuccessful attempts with conventional doctors, Ryan took the initiative to investigate his home environment and found the source of his health issue. He cured himself and is now sharing his knowledge and experience with the world. What makes Ryan stand out is his genuine care for people and his commitment to finding real solutions. Whether you are seeking answers or simply peace of mind test My home is the perfect solutions. Ryan's expertise will change your life, and I could not agree with that more. I probably mentioned your name and your company's name in my clinic. I would bet 20 times a week. What you do and the work that you're doing. You and your team is so important. As we were just talking about offline, you you tested my home and I was blown away with some of the things that you found and just the awareness you brought, even to my own family. So thank you so much for spending your time with us today.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, thanks for having me here. Yeah.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So let's just start with why do we care about our home environment? Why does that matter?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: It's because a lot of our chronic illness and a lot of the diseases we're seeing actually stem from the environment. It's where we spend 90% of our lives are indoors. And that's a lot of time that we're exposed to these toxins that not a lot of people are talking about. And so if, you know, a lot of people dealing with these issues, they're not seeing results looking in the home is really we're seeing some big impact with that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, I say it a lot. You can't heal in an environment that's going to make you sick, right? If I'm trying to detox people from mycotoxins or mold, if they're even if their exposure is minimal, Right. They they just can't heal. So what's the kind of work that you do kind of explain to us what the work that you and your team does?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So everything we do is science based. I know there can be a lot of woo woo stuff in the world in this field, but everything we do 100% science based. So we come into the home with professional meters. We do a full range of testing. We're going to analyze the water, the air quality, the EMF or the technology exposure, the lighting, the chemicals. And once we go through and we collect data, we collect samples, we send them to the lab, we get all the results back and we come up with a comprehensive plan for the home. And so any of the issues we find, any of the exposures we find, of course we're going to want to eliminate those. That's one of the biggest things when it comes to getting healthy is eliminating the source. Once we find the source, we eliminate the source. Then we come up with kind of a maintenance plan moving forward, how to keep the home healthy.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Okay. Well, let's start going through some of those. And a huge one for me and I know for you as well. Mold.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Mold. Yeah. I would say mold is probably one of the biggest that's the true pandemic of our time. A lot of people are exposed to mold. They're sick from mold, and they don't even realize it. Water is the feeding source for mold. So if you've ever had a water incident in your house, if you had a leak or you had a flood or a toilet overflowed or you have condensation or you use a humidifier, any of those things could cause mold to grow in your house. So that's what you need to think back through your home. One quick tip tip you can do right away is go into the toilet tank, lift up the toilet tank and look in the back. If you see mold growing in there, there's a good chance that you have a bigger issue in your home because that's like a natural petri dish in your home.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Because all the other because all the water is flowing into that that space. So it can you can help identify if there's any mold coming from anywhere else.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. Because it's a it's a damp, dark place where we have water. And so every time you flush the toilet, it pulls air in and pulls mold spores in and they'll land around the tank and they'll start growing if you have mold spores in your house.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So interesting. So what are some tips or let's I guess, start with other other possible indications that you could have a mold issue in your home.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: The biggest one is if unexplained health issues, you feel better outside the home, you go on vacation, you're like, wow, I went to California, to the beach for a week and I felt great. And I come back to my house and all my symptoms are starting to come back again. If the water leak is a big one, any kind of water damage or not feeling well, those are really the two biggest signs in your house that you probably have an issue.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. How about places? What are some of the obvious places in the home where you might see see mold growing?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. One thing you can do after this, you listen to this podcast, go check everywhere in your home where you have water. So the toilet tanks underneath the sinks around the showers, behind the laundry room, underneath the dishwasher, behind the refrigerator. If you're brave enough, you can crawl in your attic or your crawl space and look for any discoloration. Look for bubbling in the wood, Look for something that doesn't just look right, like it doesn't look normal. Also, use your nose. Does it smell off? Does it smell a little musty? These are all signs that you have a mold problem. Okay.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So, so many of my patients, when I start to ask them about if they've seen mold or if they've had water damage. Oh, yeah. We found some in our shower and my husband bleached it. So we're good now. Why is that not a solution?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So bleach is just going to piss off the mold and it's going to release the mycotoxin. So you talked about Mycotoxins earlier. It's it's a defense mechanism. It's the poison that the mold puts off to defend its territory. So we have the mold itself that's growing, but that's not necessarily what makes us sick. It's the bio toxins that are coming off of the mold that are being released into the air. That's what's getting into our lungs, into our body that's affecting us. Yeah.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So can you have mold growth without having the mycotoxins that can be released and impact your health?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: You can. Yeah, you can. But more often than not, we're seeing the Mycotoxin production go up. There was a study done by Dr. Klinghardt that showed there was 600 times more mycotoxin production when you're in an EMF field now we all have EMF fields in our home from the routers and the Wi-Fi and the cell phones. And so when the mold senses this, it puts up its defense and it's going to release more mycotoxins into the home.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, I was. Was in a conference. I'm sure you're well aware of the FIM, the Indian Environmental Medicine Conference. Anyways, Klinghardt was presenting on what EMFs also do to viral replication with a recent virus we've been talking about a lot, so it was some really interesting data he was presenting there as well. Yeah, in our in our patient population we see our patients that are ill with Mycotoxins are so much more sensitive to EMFs and it makes me it does make me think that there might be multiple explanation mechanisms to explain that why these patients so so I assume when you're testing someone's home, it's almost never just mold. You're looking at the EMFs because of that reason.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, that's a good point. A lot of times people are looking for that one single smoking gun, but it's usually a multiple of things. It's usually a little mold in the bathroom, a little mold Over here you got high EMF exposure. You're using some chemicals that aren't natural. You have some artificial lighting that's strobing. You have all these things together that make a pretty big deal where maybe one thing individually may not your body can handle that. But when we put all these things together, we have the compounding effect, right?
Amber Warren, PA-C: So let's let's kind of I really want to spend some time talking about EMFs Well, actually, let's finish a little bit of the mold conversation first. So what are some of you I've heard you say this multiple times. You offer some really good recommendations on how we can keep our home clear of mold. Preventative, right? Yes, let's try. We do that in our in our field all the time. Right. Let's practice preventative medicine. Let's practice preventative, healthy home environment. So what are some things that our listeners can do at home to prevent the growth of mold or Mycotoxins?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So probably one of the biggest things. Get your eyes on your home. Look in the crawlspace, look in the attic, look underneath these areas and you can install the little sensors. You can order them little water sensors on Amazon. They're like five bucks, put a battery in it and you can put them underneath all your sinks, put them behind your washing machine, put them in the crawlspace so that if you develop a leak, it's going to make a loud, annoying noise and you can go find the leak right away. A lot of times when we have mold problems, it's because we've had a leak that's gone on extensively for a month or two or even a year, and we didn't know about it. And the whole time it's been growing mold and releasing toxins into your home. So getting your eyes on your home, making sure that you keep your home dry is probably the most important thing you can do for mold prevention.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Okay. I do have a lot of patients that will tell me I said, hey, are you suspicious that there's been any water damage in your home? There's no way we live in a brand new home. Why is that not a safe statement to make? Why is that not reassuring to people like you and me?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Because a lot of times in the building process, they can make mistakes. I've seen where they're installing the cabinets and they put a nail or a screw through the water pipe and it puts a pinhole leak and it sits there and leaks in the home. Sometimes there is a malfunction with the roofing, and usually if there's a problem that's going to happen, it's going to show itself in the first six months of construction or a bigger one that we see, especially here in Boise, is that homes were built over the wet season and these homes are just soaking wet. And then they they're put together wet and they're already sandwiched in the walls. And then those the wood is releasing moisture over the next six months or a year and feeding mold behind your walls so you don't know about.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, there's a local ski resort that kind of went under for a while. Half, half built. Right. And every time we went there and I saw those, the building exposed to the elements, I was like, Oh my goodness, I'm so worried for people that purchase.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, yeah. It's a common thing.
Amber Warren, PA-C: That sit out there that would just gets really wet. Um, how about Actinomyces? Tell me a little bit about that. I know you test for it. Yes. Because I think sometimes we get so caught up in mold that we forget that there can be other, quote unquote, infections in somebody's home.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, that's kind of a new thing in the field of testing. And functional medicine is dealing with these bacterias and these pathogens that can also thrive in the environments where mold thrives. So if we have the conditions for mold, we're also having the conditions for this bacteria and these pathogens. So there's almost like a mix between bacteria and mold. And they come together and they release the they release toxins. But they're they're more mobile. They can move around. And we typically see these in the crawl space. We see them from animals. It can be from sometimes from humans as well, can put out these bacterias, but they can be very harmful just as much as mold. So it's important sometimes it may not be a mold issue. We might have a bacterial issue, pathogen issue.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Interesting. And so the bacteria, I would assume bacteria like they love sugar, but they also love damp environments. So it's really just that damp environment that's allowing them to flourish.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, water is the key ingredient for a lot of this stuff. It's just like we they need water, they need food. So if you provide those two sources, then you have the environment to have some of these nasty things going on. Absolutely.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. So let's jump into electromagnetic frequencies.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Emfs Yes, that's a hot topic.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, it is a really hot topic. Um, what are you finding in people's homes? Is it a problem?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, I'm seeing the overuse of technology. I watched a show Childhood 2.0. It's really interesting where it compared childhood now versus 40 years ago. And 40 years ago. If you want to interact with your friends, you would go down to the park. Now, if you want interact with your friends, you jump on technology. Fortunately, this technology has a really dark side to it, and that's the electromagnetic frequencies or fields that are coming off of this. Our bodies are electrical chemical beings. Our heart. Our nervous system, our brain. It all runs off of these electrical impulses. And so when we overlay these artificial frequencies and they travel through the brain and they travel through the body, they cause a lot of interference. So we see a lot of these neurological issues. We see the brain fog, we see the anxiety, we see the depression. When we have these artificial frequencies and we're overusing them, the brain never really gets a chance to rest because we're we're completely surrounded by EMF all the time. Yeah.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. Dr. Bruce, our pediatrician, he has some incredible stories of kids that come in with behavioral issues, and he tells the family, Unplug your Wi-Fi at night and get your kid off their screen. And within I'm talking 48 to 72 hours, these kids, these kids make miraculous recoveries. Pretty incredible. So what are some of these sources in the home that we need to be aware of?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So there's three different levels of sources. We got our sources outside the home, and that's usually the one that people tend to worry about the most, the five G and the scary cell towers and all this stuff. But really, it's the devices inside the home that people should be worried about the most because it's all about proximity. How close are you to these devices and how long are you in these fields? So our biggest exposure is really our cell phone. How many times throughout the day do we actually are we more than three feet away from our phone? Yeah, people that are addicted to their phones with them all the time. It's also very powerful because it has to transmit all the way back to the cell tower. And a lot of people use those a lot. So the cell phone, the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth speakers, AirPods, if you're using those and when I see I'd rather my kids smoke cigarets than use AirPods. Honestly, it's a carcinogen and you're going to do more damage.
Amber Warren, PA-C: The amount of we don't fly a lot, but when we travel, the amount of kids I see with their, I guess just not even flying and traveling, it's walking down the street, right? Walking to and from school. The the Earpods I it's mind boggling to me that people aren't making that connection of what it's doing to these little developing brains.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. And then they have the ADHD and they got to take Ritalin and Adderall and all this. Yeah.
Amber Warren, PA-C: No one's really thinking about the why.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: The direct correlation. And unfortunately, it's all the fun technology that we have. And it's not that that stuff is bad. Let's use the technology. But you need to realize that it comes at a cost. It is a carcinogen. You need to look at that technology like it's a cigaret that router sitting in the corner. Think of it, that's an ashtray with cigarets burning. So you better make sure you're getting some good benefit out of that. And when you're not using it, turn it off. It's that simple.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So that's really your biggest piece of advice. Like, just turn it off. Yeah.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: If you're not using it, turn up practical avoidance. Let's avoid it as much as we can distance ourselves from it. No, don't have the router on your office desk when you're sitting there working in the eight hours a day, don't have it next to the crib and next to your baby. Don't have it next to your sleeping area. Put it away from the people as much as possible and then turn that thing off when you're not. If you if you want to even go the next step, you can hardwire your home. That's what we do. And we don't have Wi-Fi in our house.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, you don't you don't even have Wi-Fi. We don't even have Wi-Fi. Everything's hardwired.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Everything's hardwired. Yeah. You need to come over and check out our place. We've totally set it up super healthy.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, I do want to see how you guys have done it. You know, I've. We've invested in hard wiring. I mean, you know, but hard wiring. Our home office, hard wiring. All of our TVs. We. We have the router far away. We turn it off even on Saturdays. If we're not using it. I don't even think we turn it on today yet because none of us are working from home today. So yeah, some really important things. So how about cell phones? What's the distance that your cell phone needs to be away from you to not be causing damage?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So I like it three feet away at least, you know, and that's reasonable because we got it. I mean, it'd be nice just to have it off, but we got to be realistic. We need to use our cell phones. It's a modern world. And so, yeah, instead of having in your pocket, put it on your desk. So if you're or if you're driving in the car, put it up on your dashboard. Yeah. That three foot distance lowers exposure almost 90%.
Amber Warren, PA-C: That's significant.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. And if you do have to have it in your pocket, you're at a concert, you're walking around somewhere at the park, have it on airplane mode. Yeah. And then pull it out. Turn it off, check your messages, see if somebody called. But make sure it's on airplane mode because when it's really close to the body, especially next to or private parts where our hormones are produced, that's making a significant impact on our body. Yeah, the negative impact.
Amber Warren, PA-C: These females that I see like put in their sports bra while they jog or work out, I'm like, Oh my gosh.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, you're asking for cancer and that's not fun. You don't want to deal with that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, they've done studies. I've read multiple studies where men that carry in their pockets or like their back pocket prostate cancer, but also the they look at bone density of the femurs when people that carry in their pocket. And it's dramatic. After just a few weeks of use of carrying in your pocket every day, the decreased bone density in that that bone in your thigh. Yeah, pretty.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Wild. There's another big study that came out recently that lowered testosterone because of that. That's a big one with guys. How many guys have to take hormone therapy and the pellets and all that when simply a lot of this stuff. Could just be from overuse of your technology.
Amber Warren, PA-C: That's another epidemic. T Yes. T Oh my goodness. We could go on and on, but we don't have time for that today at night. What are your recommendations at night as far as cell phone use? Right. Because a lot of people use it for their alarm.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So you can put it on airplane mode and your alarm still works. Yeah. Yeah. So we do. So I make sure it's charged during the day and then it's next to me on my bed. But it's not charging and it's not on, it's on airplane mode and I can use my alarm. But what we do at our house is we turn our circuits off at night. So for the kids side of the house, it's on a timer. So at 9:00 it powers down their whole side of the house. So the three bedrooms, the hallway, the bathroom, it all just shuts down at 6:00 in the morning, it kicks back on. So they're sleeping in a zero energy field. They sleep so good, they wake up feeling rested. So on our side, in our in the master, we have it on a switch so that we can regulate because we go to bed at different times. So when we go to bed, we just hit the button and it powers down our whole side of the house. Amazing. Like no electric fields, no magnetic fields. And of course, we don't have Wi-Fi or anything, so all that stuff is already off.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So why do we care about the phone being plugged in? This concept of dirty electricity, which you honestly taught me a lot about in my home, because that was one of our bigger issues. What Tell me what that. Why do we care about that? Yeah.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So actually on Instagram I did a project lately for a pretty big client. They had a big following. They posted it. It went viral. Several million views about the energy we read and the energy when you're holding your phone and when you're not holding your phone and when you're holding your phone while it's charging, you're getting almost 47V going through the body that we were measuring with our meter versus when you set it down so that electrical energy, that 60 cycle pulse is going through your body and it's disrupting the nervous system, disrupting the brain and the signals.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Wow. And that's is that true with anything that's that's plugged in in your in your home? Yep.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Anything that's connected to the electrical system, the electrical grid, those electrons are charged and they want to find a path back to ground. When they see our bodies as a conductive being, they're going to jump on our body and try to find a path back to ground as well. But they're an energizer body.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. I had a client that you you tested her homelessness a couple of years back. Her home was really clean with regards to EMFs, but her ceiling fans in each of the bedroom were really high in dirty electricity. And I found that fascinating. Fascinating. That's something that you wouldn't necessarily think of.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, you want to create like a eight foot bubble around your bed and all. Let your high use areas and make sure that we don't have electronics in those areas. Now, if you work from home and you have an office, that's kind of one of those deals where it's a little bit tougher to go in and do your work, do your thing. But for the majority of the rest of the time, if you have a couch or an area where you rest and relax or read a book or your bed, of course, make those little sanctuaries. Yeah. Make sure you're not bringing the electronics and the devices into those areas.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. Um, air filters. Right. I'm constantly recommending people get indoor air filters and we can talk about indoor air pollution next. But now I'm finding myself saying, Well, don't put it right next to your bed. Plug in that air filter a little, you know, like that eight foot, eight foot space. Yeah, We think we're doing something good and creating a clean air in the place that we sleep. But we could be making it dirty in another way.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, and that's a good point because there's the closer we get, the more benefit from the air. Yeah, We're also getting into that field of the magnetic field. So we, we recommend a Jasper air filter because the EMF field is only about six inches on it. And what is that called?
Amber Warren, PA-C: Jasper Okay. Yep. Interesting.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: And I got a code for it so you can put it in the show notes. But it's, it's an amazing filter. So we use it at our house. It's designed for doctor's offices, so it's quiet. Yeah. So you don't like those noisy air filters going? That's amazing. But the EMF is really low on it.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Cover the, the, the, the covers you can put around some of these devices. Laptops, cell phones. I use safe sleeve in my home. We all have safe sleeves around our electronic devices those work. So is that a gimmick?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: This is the thing with cell phones. They'll vary their power depending on how far away they are from the cell tower. So if you're really close to the cell tower, it'll send a ping and it'll say, Oh, you're only a quarter mile away. I only have to boost my power up 10%. Now what happens is we put a shield on it and it will block or attenuate that signal. So now what happens? It sends that ping out, the signal bounces back at super low level. It says, Oh, I'm 20 miles away. I need to boost my power up to be able to maintain that connection. So the phone is smart, so it just keeps boosting its power up until it maintains, gets the right connection, the right, the right wattage. And then once it does that, now we're completely overexposing ourselves where the little square behind where it is blocking, there's some blocking effect, but all the rest of around the phone is amplified much more so with my meters and my testing. We're finding that phones in the safe sleeves are actually much more powerful than phones outside the safe sleeve. So unfortunately, you know, there's really no quick fix for this stuff. You got to. So I talk, you know, I always hold it away from me at least three feet when I'm talking. Now, if it's a private conversation, I have the earphones that I plug in. Yeah, I have the little adapter and I can it's a six foot cord so I can put it on the coffee table or the desk. And I sit there and have a conversation.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Oh, that's really smart.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Last night I had a conversation. I was talking to a friend and I had my earphones in and I had the phone about six feet away from me and I was sitting on the couch. So my exposure was probably about 95% less than if I would have had it, you know, about an inch or two away from my head. I mean, you never, ever want to put the phone right next to your head. It even says that in the manual. So when they are saying it, when the FCC is saying it, yeah, you're going to get brain cancer if you put it next to your head, you know for sure that you definitely don't want to do that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. So speaking on so talking on on speaker is ideal. Yes. And then even more ideal is getting the headphones with an adapter to try and keep it away from your body when you're speaking.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: And then even next level would be to get a landline and make a majority of your phone calls on the landline. We have a forward your cell phone to the landline.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes. Oh, that's really smart. Yeah. We have a landline that I use when I'm working from home or, you know, my kids can call out call grandma or grandpa if they want to and not have to use cell phones.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yep, yep. You'll notice a lot of this technology. We went off track about 20 years ago when everything became wireless, when we had wired phones, when we had to plug in for the internet, when we'd have to go outside to play. That's, you know, all the gaming things. That's kind of where we went off track with this stuff. We need to get back to that as much as possible.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Well, think about what this pandemic did to our devices. People working from home, they're on their phones all day in meetings. They're on Zoom, they're on their laptops all day. So the Wi-Fi can't ever actually be off because they need to use that unless they're fully hardwired. Like it it oh, my goodness. The things that have come from this pandemic, just with regards to the dirty electricity EMF conversation, it's pretty frightening.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. You know, and the silver lining to that is it actually did bring a lot of awareness to environmental issues. And luckily our business was one of them that boomed from this because people were spending so much time in their home on their devices much more now, they started to get much more sick and the people that were paying attention to their bodies made the correlation like, Hey, I'm spending a lot more time in my house and I'm a lot more sick, what's going on? And so they would look us up and say, Hey, what's going on? Why? Why am I feeling like why am I feeling horrible in my house now? And we'd go out and we'd find the issue, you know? And so, you know, where before they were leaving the home for school, leaving the home for work. And so they would just mildly be sick, not enough to call the doctor, but enough to where they felt off. But now that they're in their home majority of the time, almost all the time now, it was enough that they were getting really sick from it.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. You made a comment or you made a statement in that comment that was really important. Those individuals that paid attention to their bodies. Yes. Oh, my goodness. If I had one goal for this, this, this, this world, it would be that people need to be able to make connections with their bodies and just have more body awareness on how they feel and what makes them feel poor and what makes them feel good. Yes.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: And get out of the mindset that there's a pill or a medication that cover that symptom. If you don't feel good, you need to go to the root cause and figure out what the heck is going on. The answer is not to go to Walgreens and see what drug you can do or take to cover up the symptom or go to Western medicine and get a prescription for something. That's the worst thing you can do because that's like smashing out the check engine light in your car. Yeah, that check engine, that symptom is there to warn you, to tell you that there's something going on that you need to address, that you need to fix, either in your body or in your environment or in your diet or in your exercise routine. Something is off and you need to fix it. That's the whole point of these symptoms that we feel in our body and people don't recognize it as that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: No, they don't, do they? Because we want to be comfortable. We don't want to be in pain. We don't want to be tired. We don't want to feel foggy. We want to be comfortable. We want to feel good and we want an easy fix. Easy fix is the easiest solution. Yeah, Yeah. It's so true. It's so true. We live in a very convenient environment. Um, I want to touch a little bit on these 5G towers because I. I know we were talking offline a little bit. I was on a committee 4 or 5 years ago when they were trying to decide if they wanted to choose the Treasure Valley as a smart city. And they did. We didn't have a ton of luck fighting, fighting against the giant of big technology to come and choose Boise as a smart city. What have you seen Testing homes prior to the release of these five grams and the placement of the 5G towers? And what are you seeing post implementation of 5G?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So, you know, there's a little bit of misconception with 5G. There's the 5G. The higher frequencies will actually get blocked pretty easily by the buildings, by trees, by shrubbery. Because of this, though, they have to do much, much more of them. A lot more of them have to be like instead of one cell tower that covers a 1 or 2 mile radius. Now we have to have a transceiver on every light post or every other light post. And because of that, we've saturated our environment with these frequencies. But I will tell you that when I go into homes, I do a procedure where I turn off all the power and all the devices in the house, and I do a reading inside and that's going to tell me what energy do we have coming from the outside, including 5G and from radio stations and the neighbor's Wi-Fi. And then I turn all of the devices on inside the home and I do a second reading. And 90% of the time the levels are exponentially higher when I turn the devices on inside the home. So even though five G is dangerous and even though we don't want to be exposed to it, it's a lot of times a drop in the bucket compared to what you're doing inside of your own home. Okay. The signals coming from the cell phones and the iPad and the Bluetooth speakers and your router, these are all emitting a lot more powerfully because you're a lot closer to them. So the 5G tower might be a quarter mile away and that's dangerous. And when you go outside, you're being exposed. But by the time you go inside of your house, that signal gets attenuated as it goes through your wall. Now, the biggest exposure is the Wi-Fi router that's sitting right next to your TV that's ten feet away from you on the couch. Right. That's your it's a lot closer and you're being exposed a lot more.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So really, you're saying it's just all about your proximity, right, to these these different items?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: It is. That's why earpods, cell phones, smartwatches, those are the first thing that we deal with because it's on the body physically on the body. And so it doesn't have to be very powerful to make a big impact.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Does it worry you at all that they're starting to put some of these 4G or 5G towers on top of schools?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: I mean, they've been doing that a long time. And the reason is it's a government owned facility. And so it's a lot easier to get the licensing. They go to the school that's already government. They say, hey, we'll give you a couple thousand dollars extra for your budget. Oh, that's great. Yeah, let's do that. And it's a lot easier to slide the permits through.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Is there anything we can do when we send our kids to school to protect them?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Fortunately not choose schools. I mean, when we first moved here, that's the first thing we did is drove around to all the schools and did you cell towers. And I took the readings with the RF meter and we narrowed down our school choices based off of that. Wow. That was we just had to because there's clothing, but it doesn't really work that good and it's kind of expensive. It'll block where the the fabric is, but you can't block the face in the hands and the neck and the brain. That's the important part. Yeah. Know you can't send your kids to school in a tin foil suit.
Amber Warren, PA-C: You can't choose where you send them. Yeah, I agree.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: I agree. So that's really the biggest thing.
Amber Warren, PA-C: The environment, you know, and my advice to my patients is always to like control what you can control. You can't control this world. Your kids can't live in a bubble. Like you said, we can't live in a bubble. We live within our world. We have to play nice with the technology because unfortunately, so much of what you do is online. But you can control nutrition, you can control what they see online. You can control those conversations, you can control their sleep. You can't, you know, so there's I mean, you can't fully control nutrition and sleep. But but if you keep the body detoxing and keep the cells healthy, it's unbelievable how much more resistant the body can be to getting ill from these kind of toxins we're seeing in our in our world.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, it's funny you compared it to nutrition. I would add to that, you can control it if you have a strong willpower. Yeah. And that's the same thing I'm seeing with technology and nutrition are very similar. It's like a lot of us know what we should be doing. We know we probably shouldn't lay in bed for 30 minutes before we go to sleep and scroll Instagram. Yeah, we do it. We know we probably shouldn't go out and have the pizza even though it's delicious. Like we, we, a lot of us have the knowledge on what to do, but it's implemented. I try to follow the 80 over 20 rule if I can. I was just going to say that, yeah, 80% of the time. Then the other 20 I'm not going to stress out about because I can't be perfect. No, it's way too stressful to try to be perfect. Yep. You know. Yeah, but you control what you can.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. The toxicity you create trying to control your children and everything that goes into their little bodies could definitely be greater than maybe that occasional piece of pizza or that occasional, you know, we call it like a special drink in my home and special treats. So yeah, it's really significant. The lighting in the home I loved. I was looking at one of your presentations just last night, actually, and you you visited and you talked about the the different lighting in the home because that is something I talk to my patients a lot, just in balance, circadian rhythms and how that leads to poor sleep and sleep is just so important for overall health. What's the advice you give to your patients?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Follow the sun. See what the sun is doing. It's not a coincidence that our body is. Our sleep schedule is timed exactly with the sun. When the sun goes down, we sleep. When the sun comes up, we're awake. That's not a coincidence. For the thousands of years that we've been on this planet and our eyes have been attuned to the sun. And it takes cues from the sun. So when the sun starts to go down, in the past ancestrally, all we saw was the fire and we saw candles and we saw lanterns. That has the orange and the reddish glow and it's a lot dimmer than the frequencies that we get from the sun. It's also a consistent glow. It's not flickering. So what happens now with modern lighting is the sun goes down. What do we do? We turn all those bright lighting. Sometimes it's got the blue lighting in it, the bright daylight lights. We turn on the screens, we turn on the TV that's full of blue light. That's the body's saying, Oh, wait, never mind. It's not bedtime. It must be the middle of the day because I'm getting all this blue light in my eyes.
Amber Warren, PA-C: I should be making cortisol, right? Right. The body. The brain says, let's make cortisol instead of making melatonin. And then we're not preparing for sleep and not getting our deep sleep. Yes.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So then my time, you shut your lights and you lay in bed for a while and you finally get to sleep. You know, I got a orings like a monitor that and I can tell when I've got too much blue light or I'm not paying attention to that because it takes a while for my heart rate to go down to get into that deeper sleep. And so it's super critical to watch our circadian rhythm and make sure it's aligned with the sun as much as possible. If we can get up early and get that sunlight in our eyes, that's really going to wake us up and set us for the day. I don't know if you noticed, but when we go to the lake a lot, when we go to lake with the kids or when we go skiing when we come home, the kids are always out. They sleep so much better because their eyes, they've been awake and they've been aware all day. And then they go home and you got that contrast in the body. That contrast is what tells the body to sleep. So it's really important that we have that. A lot of people don't have that and they don't sleep well.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, Yeah. And they're also not grounding and they're not getting away from the EMFs and they're not actually out in nature where our bodies were intended to be, right? God intended our bodies to be out in nature. Yeah.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: You know, modern life indoors. I don't think indoors was even a term. 200 years ago. Everybody just kind of lived outside. You went inside to go to the bathroom. You went inside to sleep at night. Was it the rest of the time you're outside, you're outside hunting and playing and cooking and doing all these things, but now it's completely flipped. We spend the majority of our life indoors in these synthetic environments that have synthetic lighting and synthetic paint and unnatural chemicals and EMF exposure and now mold that's building up in the house. It's no wonder that we're having these issues with our bodies that so many people are sick. It's not a surprise.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Oh, absolutely. So what are some things we can do to mitigate those exposures in our home, like the fluorescent bright lights?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So, you know, switching out, making sure you use an incandescent or halogen lights, making sure we're getting as much natural light as possible. So many times I go into a test, they have all their blinds closed, they have blackouts, and then they have all this artificial lighting, like open this stuff up, let that natural light in as much as possible. Get outside as much as you can, open the windows, get that fresh air in. You can monitor the air quality outside. There's a couple apps you can go to Brizo Meter or airnow.gov and you can monitor. The air quality is great outside, open up the doors and windows, get that fresh air. And even if it's a little cold or a little hot, I'd say at least 15 minutes a day. Get that fresh air in, you know, Now we're talking about air quality a little bit, but that's an important one. One thing that I see a lot of homes, the problem is they don't get enough fresh air. Yes, the homes are built so airtight and everything is so stuffy in there. And then the toxins can build up and then we breathe out. Co two I see. Co two levels through the roof is in a lot of these homes and that can affect brain function because we're not getting enough oxygen to the body.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So the indoor air is more dirty than our outdoor air.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: We know that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes it is. So get that. Get the air filters in there. Open up those windows, get get air flowing in your home.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: The only other time I'd say not to do that is if there's fire season, wildfire, smoke, pollution. But the majority of the time it's cleaner outside than it is inside.
Amber Warren, PA-C: And you talk a lot about getting the right kind of filters for your HVAC system. Yes.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: So an easy tip you can do is go check your home if it's dusty or if your home gets dusty. Often that means that you're not getting enough air filtration because the dust that's on your table comes from the air. So all the particles that are in the air, they'll settle out, land on dust. So if we can catch those particles in our filters, they're not going to get in our lungs, they're not going to get in our food. And dust is a majority made up of skin cells. It's made up of dust mites, insect parts, insect feces, mold spores and heavy metals.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Right.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Heavy metals, heavy metals, foams, fibers, plastics, microplastics. All this stuff is floating around in the air. We're breathing this stuff in. It's getting on our food. It's getting on our plates. We're eating it. So if we can catch these particles in the air with an air filter. Now our HVAC system has an air filter in it. So make sure you go check your air filter in your HVAC system. Make sure it's a good high quality one, at least a merv 11 or higher. If you can get a merv 13, that's great. Yep, that's the client. And she had a cheap one in there and she got online and look, she's like, Oh my gosh, this filter is like 30 bucks. I'm like 30 bucks. Are you kidding me? To have clean, fresh air in your home, that's like no brainer. It's a no brainer. Yeah. So get the high quality air filters and turn the fan mode to on use the fan. Use the HVAC system, the cycle, the air through your house and filter the air. So fresh air from the outside filter the air through HVAC system. If you're still noticing dust on your surface, get a couple standalone units like a Jasper or something where you can filter the air inside that particular room.
Amber Warren, PA-C: If you're still seeing dust, could it be that you just need to get your ventilation system cleaned? Yes.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. Okay. Good point. Ducting needs to be cleaned at least every three years.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Every three years.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Every three years. Yeah. And if you live in more of a dusty environment or you're seeing more dust. Yes. Get it cleaned maybe every two years. Yep.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Okay, good. Um, water. It's a really big one. Yes. Water quality because we don't have. Great water quality in this in this community, at least here in the Treasure Valley. So you go in and you test people's people's water, right?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Water is part of the routine. That's extremely important. People think about the water they drink, but a lot of times they don't think about the water that they're showering in, that they're bathing in. Our skin is porous. When we're in a bathtub soaking and we're soaking in whatever's in whatever minerals we put in there, whatever minerals are in the water when we're taking a steamy shower and it's evaporating and we're breathing that stuff in, we're being exposed to the chemicals and toxins that are in the water. Super critical. I can say there's not very much tap water in this country that I would drink. And it's I hate to say that, but that's the truth. And we just had this big Ohio train derailment that polluted all their water systems. Oh, my goodness. That is nothing new that's been going on for 80 years. Yeah, that's unfortunately, a lot of our water supply is pretty tainted. So we need to be filtering that water, a whole home filter and then a reverse osmosis system for your point of source water, your drinking water. If you're not doing that, that's a big you're putting a lot of chemicals into your body. And as you know, working with detox, it's much easier to prevent this stuff from coming in than it is to detox it after the fact. Yeah.
Amber Warren, PA-C: And that's you know, the water is so important. And that's what I tell so many patients that get so overwhelmed, they come and see us, right? Or they talk to you and they're like, I don't even know where to start. And it's like, I need you to think about the things that are coming into your body or being exposed to every hour of every day, Right? The clothes you're wearing, what are you breathing? So what's your laundry detergent? Right. The indoor air. You're breathing. So what? What are you cleaning your home with? Right. The water you're drinking. How often are we taking sips of water? If you are literally poisoning yourself every 45 minutes from the water you drink or what you drink your water in. Right. If it's a plastic water bottle that hangs out, you heat up in your washing or your washing machine, your dishwasher, and then it hangs out in your car in the summertime or when your car gets hot, you're poising yourself multiple times a day. So it's so important. Yeah.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: And I go by, you know, at least for my health and my family and I talk to my clients. The four pillars I think are so important that are basics, that's clean water, clean air, clean food and clean thoughts. To me that those are the basics. If you're not doing that, I mean, you don't even have a business going out trying to do other biohacking stuff. You've got to do those four things first and then address where your body's at.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, those are I love those four pillars. Those are so important. Um, my goodness, we've talked about so many things. Do you have a whole house water filter that you recommend for your clients?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: We like the ecosystem. Okay. Yeah, we have a link to it on our website. We worked out a deal with them. We get a little discount for our clients. Cool. We actually drink. We added a hydrogen water as well, so we have a pre filter. We have a whole home filter. Then we have a water softener and then we have the arrow that goes to the drinking. And then we have the fourth stage where we add infused hydrogen into the water. So cool. So it's a little bit extra. But for me, and maybe too much information, but I more regular when I drink hydrogen water. Are you what that is. Yeah yeah. Interesting. And I feel more hydrated.
Amber Warren, PA-C: So it's making an impact on your cells and your microbiome.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: My my digestive system really appreciates it. Yeah, that's really good. Something's going on with that, but.
Amber Warren, PA-C: That's really cool. Um, what else are you testing in these homes that we haven't touched on? I know there's lots you are very comprehensive, almost overwhelmingly comprehensive in your testing. It is.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: You know, because we don't want to miss anything. If someone a lot of our clients that call us up are sick, they're not feeling well and we're trying to get answers. And so or there's people that are just trying to biohack and they just want to live the optimal lifestyle. They want to be healthy, they want to feel the best they can. And so we're going to go through everything that we can. But, you know, we talked on a lot of the important stuff. You know, chemical exposure. I think if you're not sure if a product is toxic or not, you can go to EWG, Environmental Working Group. There's an app that they have Dirty Think Dirty. Amazing. Yeah. And you can scan the barcode, make it super simple.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. It was interesting. When you tested my home, I was really surprised by a lot of things. I want to point out a few things that I talk to patients all the time about wireless printers, the devil, the amount of EMFs they they leak right at our Roku vacuum.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, I remember that because we had to actually take the battery out so we could do testing because it was so annoying.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Like, you know, I'm like thinking Ryan's judging me for some of the things in my home. I'm like, Oh, Ryan, I unplugged that thing. I only use it like once a week and I charge it and then run it and then I unplug it and he's like, Oh, yeah, good job, Amber. You actually have to take the battery out because it was blowing up the whole downstairs of your home.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah, that was pretty bad. It was wild.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah. And then some of the samples that you took from the carpet looking for microbes and toxins on, which I hate to say we have, we do have a little bit of carpet in our home, but I'm going to take care of it at some point. But like, even just the places we didn't regularly vacuum, like under my kids bed, the pollutants you picked up on that carpet that doesn't regularly get regularly cleaned or carpet because I don't move their bunk bed when we have someone come clean the carpets. So it's just things like that that were so intriguing to me. Yeah, our.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Home and that's what a good, deep, clean. And when I say deep clean, we're pulling out the fridge. We're pulling out the dishwasher or the washing machine. Yeah. Even. The dishwasher and cleaning behind these areas, moving the beds behind the dressers, because that's where a lot of this stuff builds up. Now it takes a little draft of air going through and it kicks that stuff up and we breathe it in.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, well, we're so you're really one of a kind, honestly, in this whole country. And we're so honored that you're here in the Treasure Valley and our patients have access to you. We will link the indoor air filter you mentioned and then definitely your website to these show notes. I end each one of my podcasts with just this question. If you had one piece of advice to give our listeners that you think is can make the most significant impact on this topic, what would it be?
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: You know, that's a good one. There's so many things, but I would say just be very conscious of your minute day like minute to minute decisions that you're making because all the decisions you make in your life can either tip the scale towards bringing health and vitality, or it can bring you towards sickness and disease. Every little decision, if you decide, are we going to stop at McDonald's and are we going to eat some horrible food, we're tipping it the wrong way. If I decide to go take a walk out in the park tipping it the right way, if I decide to read a book or hang out with my kids or sing a song or go dancing, that's in the positive direction. You know, we want to use some toxic chemicals or we want to stay on the iPad or watch TV before bed. We're going in the wrong direction. So just being very, very conscious, I think a lot of us kind of know inside what we should be doing. Being conscious of every single decision and know that it's moving the needle one way or the other. And so where do you want that needle to move? Yeah, just be aware of that.
Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, That's a beautiful piece of advice. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. I hope you continue to hire more people to help you, because I know you are overwhelmingly busy right now. Yes. And just thanks for all the work that you're doing and even just all the free education and information you provide for our community is so valuable and so important.
Ryan Blaser, Test My Home: Yeah. And thanks for this podcast, bringing awareness to it and having me on. I appreciate.
Amber Warren, PA-C: It. Yeah, Thanks for coming on. Thank you for listening to the Functional Medicine Foundations podcast. For more information on topics covered today, programs offered at FMF and the highest quality of supplements and more. Go to Fun Med Foundations dot com.