Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, energy, physical health, or even some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state. I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.
I’m so excited to be joined by one of my favorite people, Dr. Pejman Katiraei, he is a board certified pediatrician who completed his undergraduate at UCLA and then obtained an osteopathic medical degree from Western University.
He completed his pediatric residency at Luma Linda University, where he stayed on as a teaching faculty for over four years. And one of my favorite things is that he feels we must do more to help children who are struggling, and that’s why he helped found the Holistic Minds and AI holistic assistant to empower an army of healthcare providers to help families find and treat the root cause of complex health problems. I was honored to hear him speak at a recent conference where he talked about mold and he talked about it in such a way that never really landed quite the same before, how it’s really the root cause for so many, not just physical things, not just allergies, not just respiratory conditions, but the underlying root cause for mood disorders, for focus challenges, for a lot of issues that we see not only in our children but in ourselves. So I’m so excited to drill down on this. Welcome and thank you for being here.
Pejman Katiraei: Thank you for having me. Thank you for creating this space for us to hopefully share some good information that’ll help people understand what may be happening to them and their kids.
Jodi Cohen: Yeah, I’d love to cast the net fairly wide and just talk about, I’m actually super curious how you’ve even figured out mold was going on if it just was kind of the root cause for all the symptoms you were seeing, but either you or your child aren’t quite right. What are some of the symptoms that you might be experiencing if you are living in a moldy environment or working in a moldy environment?
Pejman Katiraei: I share with people that mold is having a ghost in your home that you can’t really see. Some people can smell it, but most people can’t. So it’s one of those things unless you know what to look for, it’s so obscenely easy to miss. You miss it on tests, like regular lab tests would never show it. So it is almost like a ghost that’s floating around causing harm for adults. One of the biggest telltale signs that I see if someone is being exposed is just this weird state of brain fog or memory issues where young people and I have the parents of my kids that are in their thirties or forties, they’re like, yeah, my memory is just shock. I can’t remember the basic things. I am a busy professional, but I’m struggling to remember some of the things and I have to write everything down.
The other thing is just weird energy lapses where they’re just exhausted for no reason. They have to drink 10 cups of coffee to keep going. They wake up tired even though they’ve slept nine hours, or eight hours, which for any healthy adult should be good. So those are the two most kind of common vague things. And then along with that, you can have recurrent sinus issues. There are adults that are like, yeah, every time my kid gets sick, I get nailed and I’ve had pneumonia once and I’ve had a sinus infection once. And a lot of these things that normally you wouldn’t think is a big deal except most healthy adults shouldn’t be getting sick from, I mean, yeah, your kid has a nasty virus. You get congestion and cold for a few days, but it shouldn’t turn into pneumonia or a gnarly sinus infection that now lands you on some kind of antibiotic like Cipro. So these are the things, the common things. And then from there, you can have thyroid issues, gastrointestinal issues, autoimmunity, and all kinds of other things that can show up in the adults.
Jodi Cohen: And then for kids, it’s funny, everything you said, I’m like, check, check, check. Sometimes I’m talking and I’m like, wait a minute, what is that word? Flannel? I couldn’t remember the flannel the other day. Yeah. So in children, fatigue is probably a focus issue. What are some of the other symptoms for the parents that are listening that might show up in children?
Pejman Katiraei: The first thing that really has me perk my ears up is weird sensory changes. So these kids that have trouble with hair washing, they get overwhelmed and they may not be on the autism spectrum and certainly the kids on the autism spectrum, but the kids that just get overwhelmed in loud environments, crowded environments, and their sensory perception of the world has changed. They could be clumsy and they’re just, yeah, my kid just stumbles and falls all the time. It could be that they can’t tolerate clothing. It’s not just like…
Jodi Cohen: Or the socks. I had one like that.
Pejman Katiraei: And if it’s just a sock, maybe not a big deal, but if your kid only wears four shirts because everything else is uncomfortable to them. And then as an extension of this, usually they have these weird eating patterns where they also only eat a handful of foods. Usually, it’s like chicken nuggets from one place, but it’s like chicken nuggets, maybe pizza, maybe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and plain pasta period, end of story. No fruits and vegetables. They can’t tolerate the texture of proteins, and it’s this weird constellation of sensory issues that shows up first and foremost as an extension of that. And we can talk about how these are all tied together. A lot of times what you also see is a lot of distractibility. So the kids that are just all over the place, which we label as A-D-D-A-D-H-D, a lot of times they have the hyperactivity, which is actually a vestibular issue, has to do with their balance centers being off.
So the reason why they’re moving is that actually helps them calibrate their sense of balance. Their body is actually moving them because the body needs that sensory input, even though we label it as, oh, that kid is hyperactive, that kid is moving for a reason. Some of these kids will have a weird fear response, which also can show up as anger because fear and anger psychologically are intimately related. So these kids that just lack any real ability to manage their emotions, any little thing sets them off and they’re just either crying or becoming angry over nothing. And then anxiety. So as all of these things unfold, these children develop these weird patterns of anxiety where little things cause them to freak out. They’re hesitant to be out in the world. Sometimes there are weird patterns of OCD where they’re extremely rigid and the parents are like, yeah, we have to map out every single thing that we’re going to do in the day. And if we deviate even the slightest bit, where instead of going from here to the ice cream shop, we first stop at the store, Johnny loses it because he can’t tolerate that deviation. So they’re very weird patterns of sensory and psychological manifestations and learning issues that all kind of can come together. And sometimes it’s all of it. Sometimes it’s parts of it, but when you see it, it’s like, oh God, that’s kind of weird.
Jodi Cohen: I love that. I mean, you’re so clearly articulating this behavioral pattern that I can think of my own child, so many people are coming to mind, including myself in some ways. So could we maybe get into why mold presents this way and then we can maybe talk about how to identify if you have mold in your home and what you might do as a first step in addition to seeing you?
Pejman Katiraei: Sure, sure. Do you mind if I expand on a few other things that families can see?
Jodi Cohen: I would love that kids.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah, thanks. So what we also sometimes see is a lot of congestion. So it can show up in the adults too, but in the kids, the kids that get recurrent ear infections, the kids that have these honking adenoids, and there’s actually one research study out there that showed that adenoid hypertrophy is significantly more prevalent in kids that live in mold contaminated environment. So lots of allergies, lots of congestion, recurrent sinus issues, and the kids that are exhausted, so as you touched on, they just lack vitality. They’re tired all the time, they lack color in their face. Some of these kids have failed to thrive, so they’re not growing, and at the end of the day, it just looks like that life force, the Q in their body is just depleted. That is one of the other manifestations that can show up with this mold exposure. Why mold does this is, I mean, first and foremost, mold is just something that is highly toxic to the system, so it’s toxic to our mitochondria.
There are probably 10 to 20 studies that I know of off the top of my head where they have found that these multi toxins actually disrupt the mitochondria, multiple different pathways, and the mitochondria, little generators, we eat food, the food gets broken down to the components that get fed into the mitochondria like gasoline. The mitochondria then generate electricity, a TP, which gives us vitality ability to think, ability to talk, and so forth. It’s almost like imagining a generator having multiple parts it either becoming broken or degraded, or there’s sludge in the generator, so the generator just cannot run as efficiently to produce energy. So it’s still running, but it’s running at 70% instead of a hundred percent. So that’s where the low vitality, the low energy in the kids and adults comes from. A lot of times that’s also where brain fog comes from, so that when the mitochondria aren’t running well and we have inflammation and toxicity, accretes this weird state of brain fog on top of that, this is the part that at least I think is kind of cool and interesting.
Mold toxins and mold itself trigger a very weird inflammatory response. Is it mast cell activation? Yeah. Wow. Okay. So mast cells are highly, highly, highly sensitive to mold and mold toxins, and it’s not just within our nose and throat. It turns out that in the gastrointestinal tract, these mold and toxins, which we are swallowing, and because we inhale it, the toxins go through our bloodstream, and then via the bloodstream, they can actually activate the mast cells because they ultimately will get into where the mast cells are and trigger them, and they trigger the mast cells to become activated. And the mast cells are essentially these guard dogs or guards of our body. They’re there to protect us from weird things, and they’re there constantly surveilling the environment to make sure nothing bad happens to us. So when mast cells see these moldable toxins, it’s like the burglar that’s trying to into your house and your guard dog is just going nuts trying to protect the house, right?
Pejman Katiraei: It’s aggressively trying to attack it to the point where it starts breaking windows and breaking doors because it’s just going full force to try to break, to stop that intruder. Now, in a way it’s like, well, it’s great that the mast cells are trying to protect us, except that comes at a huge cost. And the first thing is all the congestion and histamine and so forth, except that same immune reaction also affects this thing. It affects the nervous system, and that’s where the weird constellation of aggression irritability sensory issues, and anxiety comes from.
Jodi Cohen: I love that. I love the way you correlate those two things because I know a lot of kids that have tons of inflammation and we’re just assuming, oh, it must be the diet. But then you do the food allergy test and it’s a little inconclusive. Some mold is something, it’s a blind spot that people should look at.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah. And sometimes what you’ll see is you do the food sensitivity or allergy tests and everything lights up, and I’m sure you’ve had those patients where you’re like, what the hell is going on? There are more foods they can’t eat, and there’s like three foods that they can’t eat to the point where you’re like, wait, how does this make sense? And that’s part of that immune activation where the gut has become so reactive that it’s now reacting to everything. When you see these patterns or there are other things and you do the elimination diet and it’s not working, if you stand back and say, why is this system as a whole, this human body so activated, why is this immune system so irrational? And it’s almost like if you look at the guard dog if that guard dog has now become rabid to the point where it’s no longer behaving normally, it’s not like, Hey, teal, calm down and the dog is still going nuts. That is what mold and mold toxins do to the immune system. It causes almost a rabid-like weird activation that’s not rational by any means.
Jodi Cohen: That is so helpful. So for anyone who’s listening who either hears themself or their child in what you’re describing, what is your protocol? How do you help people? What are your steps for figuring out if there is mold in the house for eradicating the mold and just supporting the body?
Pejman Katiraei: It all starts with first just having a suspicion. I mean, I have to tell you, if you had talked to me, let’s say seven, probably even six years ago, I would not be where I am now. I thought I knew something about MOT six years ago, and I thought I had some awareness, and it was actually one of the families in my practice that kid had a severe case of pans, which is just he had high anxiety, couldn’t go to school, anxiety, intense aggression, irritability, so forth. And we tried everything, elimination diets, checking his poop, literally checking everything.
Pejman Katiraei: Nothing made any sense, nothing worked. And she was the one that’s like, Hey, could this be mold? And long story short, it was, and it opened up my eyes to this, and then I did some training, but you have to first start with getting to a place of saying, gosh, maybe this is mold.
And the reason for that is, frankly speaking, most of our testing is, I hate to use the word useless. They’re not useless, but they’re highly fallible. For instance, a lot of people will do a urine mold toxin test either through a company like Mosaic or through real-time labs. There’s another company called Vibrant. All of these tests, first of all, they’re not FDA approved, but more so they can give way weird positives where there isn’t mold and it shows up like, oh, this is scary because the person is eating peanut butter and other mold-contaminated food. Coffee, yeah, coffee or it can look totally normal except a person is living in God awful amounts of mold. I’ve seen both.
Jodi Cohen: Okay. False positives and false negatives.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah. Okay. Some people use organic acid tests. This is a test where essentially you’re checking the biochemistry of the body, and there are a lot of holistic providers that see kids that use this as their first tool. And in my experience, 40% of the time, give or take, it gives a false negative where the fungal markers and the markers that would suggest there’s some kind of mold look totally normal, absolutely normal, except things are not normal. And that’s scary almost one in two times, if your tests just completely flop and you don’t know that it’s flopping, someone would do the test. They’re like, oh, everything is fine. There’s no issue. And they move on except there is an issue. And these were all the mistakes I made early on where I would do these tests and be like, oh, this is a mold, and I’d move on to other stuff. And then a year later, it’s like you kind of hit yourself in the head. You’re like, God, how did I miss that?
Jodi Cohen: What about that eyesight test? I think maybe it’s $15 online, and if your eyesight is a little off, that could be mold.
Pejman Katiraei: The sensitivity of that is much higher for kids. I don’t use it as much just because the compliance isn’t always great.
Jodi Cohen: What’s the name of that test? So I can put it in the show notes.
Pejman Katiraei: I have to look it up honestly. Okay. Yeah, no, I’ll it up. I’m aware of it. I don’t use it much just because for the kids, again, I didn’t find that it’s helpful there.
Jodi Cohen: A good diagnostic tool that you found that’s accurate?
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah, that takes us to blood testing. Antibody testing so far has been the most accurate way to detect if there’s exposure to mold and you can do it through companies like Alles, A-L-L-E-T-E-S-S or through another company called My Myco Lab, you can actually check for immune reactions against molds or in the case of my Myco, you can actually check for immune reactions against the mold toxins, at least in my experience, have seen the sensitivity of these tests where they actually accurately detect what’s going on to be closer to 80%. Still not a hundred percent. I’ve seen them fail as well, but they’re better than the other tests. And sometimes what I’ll do is actually use a combination. So I’ll do a blood test with a urine test and sometimes the blood test flops, but the urine test picks it up or vice versa. I’ve had some patients where the families come in and they’re like, look, I don’t want to stick a needle in my kid and I don’t want to spend 400 bucks if it’s not going to give me the results.
And sometimes in those cases when you add things up with a history, the kid has anxiety, the mom has brain fog, another one of the kids has chronic congestion, and yeah, that window in their bedroom has been leaking for the last two years. Our roof has been leaking or whatever. In some of these cases, what I do is I tell them like, look, save your money. Don’t spend money on the test. Let’s do an accurate test of the home to see if what we think is happening is happening and why I say an accurate test of the home. This is another area where there’s a lot of variability, to say the least. I can’t tell you how many families I’ve had have come in where they’re like, yeah, we had our home tested twice by an inspector and there was no mold, and there was one family where the dad absolutely thought I was just completely off my rocker because he brought in one of his friends who’s a contractor, has a mold testing company.
They came, and they did the testing, no mold in the house, and everything was fine. I told the mom like, Hey, this isn’t making sense. The older daughter had weird sensory issues, and weird anxiety. The little one who was only nine months old was sleeping eight hours a night, and that was like with waking up two or three times in the middle of the night, and for an infant, she was napping 45 minutes once or two times a day. That’s another kind of weird thing that can happen with mold exposure. So long story short, I hounded them, hounded them. They finally brought in someone that I recommended. It turns out that the way that the weatherproofing of the house was, it was completely torn and literally the entire perimeter of their downstairs, because moisture, every time it rained, moisture was coming straight into the wall. There was mold around the entire bottom part of the house, and that initial mold inspector with the way tested completely missed it. It’s spooky, it’s scary.
Jodi Cohen: We had mold in our front load washing machine and we’re told that that’s fairly common. So all the time I was washing their clothes, everything that they were sleeping in wearing, it was exposing them.
Pejman Katiraei: Air conditioning units. I’ve had some families where the house was fine, but the air conditioning unit, because air conditioning units, when they run, they trap all this moisture, they take moisture out of the air. If that moisture doesn’t drain quickly away from the coils, those coils, if they sit there just wet all the time. I’ve had some cases where every time the family was running the air conditioning unit, the coils were the source of mold.
Jodi Cohen: Or even the ducks in the house can get. Yeah. Wow. So remediation is important. And then I know you also have really good tools for helping remediate the body, like certain supplements, certain protocols. Can you share a little bit about that?
Pejman Katiraei: Sure. So one of the first things I do for the kids, especially if they’re presenting with anxiety or learning difficulties or anger and aggression, which is a large part of what I take care of, or kids with autism for instance, and they come in and they’re disconnected from the world, my first step is just to calm down their systems. And how we do this is through using anti inflammatories. So there’s a really cool supplement called mi, widely available super, super safe. M-I-R-I-C-A MI is a blend of this bioflavonoid called luteolin in this fat extract from eggs called PEA, and that combination calms down the mast cells, so the rabid dog that’s going nuts. This supplement actually calms down the mast cells, and part of why that’s important is the histamine and the inflammation. These mast cells cause actually where a lot of these sensory issues come from.
So histamine actually happens to be a powerful regulator of the nervous system, and a way to think about that is if you ever take Benadryl, right, what happens? Most people just you knock out, right? You fall asleep because the histamine levels have dropped way low. If histamine is super, super high on top of first of all, feeling hyper-caffeinated, I joke with some families, I’m like, Hey, it really looks like your kid is hyper-caffeinated. And they’re like, yeah, he just can’t slow down. By modulating histamine, we’re able to calm down the nervous system because histamine affects dopamine, A lot of the catecholamines like adrenaline or epinephrine. So we’re able to calm down these pathways that stimulate the nervous system because histamine also directly impacts the sensory pathways, so sound processing, visual processing, the vestibular, and the balance centers. As we reduce the histamine, what happens is intense sensory distortion.
Pejman Katiraei: And the best way to contextualize this, imagine if your brain’s volume of the world, all your senses, not just sound, but all your senses would be turned up so normal should be like, let’s say 50% happy, normal people that are comfortable in the world, their volume setting is 50. Imagine if that was turned up to 85, or 90 and the entire world felt almost like too loud. It’s too intense. Some of these people, we have called the highly sensitive people, HSPs, except when you look at HSP, I’m a highly sensitive person. I sense a lot in the world, but when my nervous system is balanced, I can sense a lot, but be comfortable in the world. When my nervous system goes out of balance and I’ve had a little bit too much pizza and haven’t taken care of myself, weird things start happening to my nervous system, HSPs, that we kind of clump into that camp or sensory kids or autism or some of the kids that have social anxiety.
When you drill down and you ask, what is it that causes all of these people, these children to struggle, it’s their sensory pathways that are just kind of out of control. They’re turned up. It’s overwhelming. When you bring down that rabid dog behavior and you bring down histamine, I’ll share another two supplements actually that are helpful. What we do is we calm down that sensory overwhelm. We calm down the nervous system, we calm down that agitation, and through that, all of a sudden these kids are now feeling comfortable in their skin, they’re comfortable in their world, their anxiety calms down, their irritability calms down. And I’ve had families where the poor kids couldn’t leave the house. Literally, they couldn’t leave the house because they were just so overwhelmed, and whether they had autism or not, frankly doesn’t matter, kids that would have full-fledged meltdowns because everything was causing them to feel overwhelmed, suddenly their tantrums and meltdowns are gone.
In addition to the miracle to calm down this rabid dog, mast cell activity, there’s an enzyme called the DAO enzyme, a diamine oxidase. Enzyme Seeking Health has one, it’s called Histamine Digest, but there are a bunch of companies that have it, one of my favorites is actually called Nature Dao, N-A-T-U-R-D-A-O. They’re out of Spain, I believe, and the reason why I like them is they’re a hell of a lot cheaper than other ones, and they work really well. But these enzymes reduce the histamine levels that are released within the gut which ultimately makes it up here, and by reducing the histamine levels, we’re able to again calm down the nervous system. Another handy supplement that I’ve come to love is cat claw. So literally cat claw. Part of what Cat Claw is really cool at is reducing this compound called TNF Alpha and TNF Alpha is part of the signaling pathways between the mast cells and some of the other immune cells. So when you calm that down, it’s like the irritating signals that are constantly bouncing back and forth between these immune cells constantly driving. The inflammation calms down, and that helps the system calm down.
Jodi Cohen: I love this, and what I really love is that so many people assume that certain things are just their personality or their child’s personality. I’m an introvert. Loud noises feel overwhelming. I get really overwhelmed and crowded like I’m claustrophobic. We’ve all kind of painted ourselves into a corner thinking that it’s our personality and it’s really our body’s reaction to something that can be regulated and modulated. I love this.
Pejman Katiraei: I love what you just said. It’s so true. I’ll actually share an example of my own, because I, for the longest time, hated skiing because that sliding down a mountain at any speed just made me feel so uncomfortable. Yeah, it was scary. It was scary. And I was one of those annoying people that on the green slopes was inching my way forward, and the entire time I’m like, why the hell am I doing this? This is miserable. Long story short, I started taking the miracle in particular and then did some sensory integration work afterward, and then we went skiing just this last December, and I literally got off the run or the lift within the first 15 seconds. I’m like, oh my God, this is so much fun. And then I started going faster and faster and faster, and by the third run, I was going so fast that I actually ended up injuring myself because my speed and skillset were very much out of line. But it was weird to your point where all of a sudden it’s almost as if I had inhabited a different brain in my experience of skiing and other parts of the world had completely changed.
Jodi Cohen: No, I took it and I have rigidity issues, and I noticed I was really when someone was doing the leaf blowing on the street, my whole capacity for sensory overload was too great. And yeah, I’m much better at regulating everything that I thought was my personality, I think is actually my biochemical reactions. So I love this.
Pejman Katiraei: That’s so cool. I’m happy that you got to enjoy that. But I mean, to your point, how many millions of people, how many kiddos out there have this going on where they have some inflammation driving this and we just say, oh, well, this kid just has some social anxiety. That kid is just shy. This kid has some anger issues, and that’s like the power of this conversation that we’re able to take these things that we see all the time and now put it into the context of physiology and do something about it.
Jodi Cohen: Well, I know so many kids that have anxiety, they have depression, they can’t focus, and so they take the anxiety med, the depression med, the DD med, and it does nothing because that’s not the reason. It’s a biochemical imbalance. The mold is complicating their A PT production. They’re having mast cell issues. Maybe they have pain, maybe they have eczema. And so anything we can do to help them realize, first of all, where you do not have problems. There’s nothing wrong with your personality. Your body is just reacting to things, and we’re just going to regulate your body, and those symptoms are going to go away.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like if your car started showing yellow and red warning lights, you wouldn’t ignore it and just be like, oh, yeah. You’d
Jodi Cohen: Say, oh, I bought a lemon. You’d fix it.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah, you would go and say, what the heck is going on? I think the problem is if you have a broken leg, it’s obvious you have a broken leg. Correct. Right. Now, when it comes to mental health, our ability to understand the physiological root causes of most mental health issues is, I mean, frankly, this is why I’m so happy to be having this conversation with you and for us to share this with your community because we have to start looking at this differently. You touched on depression. I can’t tell you. I’ve had several dozen kids come in with severe depression where they were put on multiple different antidepressants, and it turns out that just exactly what you touched on, they had an issue with their A TP production, and literally their A TP production had tanked, and they were exhausted and feeling depressed and feeling sad.
Why? Because they didn’t have any vitality. And I put them on some carnitine. There’s a beautiful supplement called Spectrum Needs, and it’s made for kids on the spectrum, but my wife takes it. My kids take it because it just works so well for optimizing energy. And some of these kiddos, literally within a few weeks, go from severely depressed and medication-resistant depression, not like, oh, he’s a little sad, severe depression to three weeks later, all of a sudden feeling happy and energetic and doing well. And it’s just understanding the biochemistry, understanding the physiology to make a difference in all of these people’s lives.
Jodi Cohen: Well, and the miracle, I believe, what did you say? Two capsules twice a day, and within two weeks, you can tell something is different.
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah, it gets cool. It doesn’t take 15 years. That dosing is kind of, I do a loading dose, so for little kids, little kids, I’ve had three and six-year-olds on it, and for them, I’ll typically give them one capsule. Always talk to your doctor. Don’t just listen to me or anyone but little kids. I’ll put them in one capsule a day to start, and then half a capsule. For older kids, I’ll start them at one to two capsules a day and then drop them down. And I mean, for adults, these supplements are safe. You can’t really cause much harm. So for adults, two capsules twice a day, and either within two weeks you’re like, or three weeks, you’re like, oh, wow. Something is changing. My anxiety, my reaction to the world. Some people, I’ve also seen impulsivity change because it turns out that part of the microglia, which is another part of the immune system that is affected, actually plays a part in impulsivity. So those kids that just, they can’t help themselves, then they react to everything they touch, everything they do, they talk out of line. I’ve literally seen within two weeks impulsivity and some of these things calm down as well.
Jodi Cohen: My son was a blur outer. Yeah, he answers himself. This is amazing. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to share?
Pejman Katiraei: I think that this is great, and it’s complicated, but it’s also simple, right? When you step back, you’re like, God, a lot of this is almost intuitive once you start kind of just seeing some of the connections. And part of my wish is to really just help more people see these things and to be able to reach into these worlds and get access to this information because the science is there. If you type in microglia and impulsivity or microglia and anger or mast cells or histamine and sensory pathways, the information is there. The problem is we just haven’t been able to put this in the hands of people and providers so they can make a difference in their lives or the providers and the lives of the people they serve.
Jodi Cohen: Well, I’m so grateful to you and all the dots that you have connected and all the people that you are helping and will continue to help. Can you please share more about how people can find you and work with you?
Pejman Katiraei: Sure. Sure. So first of all, I’m on Instagram. So for those who are interested in going to Instagram, holistic Kids, so W-H-O-L-I-S-T-I-C kids, I have a clinic, which is also Holistic Kids and Families. The main area that I’m focusing on is really doing a lot more than seeing people one-on-one because that’s not how we can change the world. I wish that I could help every single kid out there who’s struggling, but that’s just not a physical possibility. Part of yes, but that’s part of why we created Holistic Minds. Holistic Minds, as you mentioned early on, is an AI platform that essentially gives any provider who’s interested superpowers. It helps them quickly see what’s going on. So it asks all the questions and gathers all the data processes. The data, helps the provider see the patterns within the data. So kind of all the things that I shared on our podcast and our discussion, they’re all patterns.
The system is literally scanning for all these patterns and many, many more, and it’s assessing the mitochondria. It’s assessing mast cells, it’s assessing histamine, it’s assessing the gut, it’s assessing the environment, and it’s not just mold. It’s looking for Lyme, looking for heavy metals, looking for glyphosates, and through this, it helps providers start seeing like, oh God, this kid may be exposed to, let’s say, mold. What are the tests in order to check this, here are the supplements like Miracle and Histamine Digest and many more that I can use to start helping this child get better, and because the system automates the hell out of everything, it’s not just all providers know how to look for these things. I’m sure as you help people, you run into the same thing. What we do takes a lot of time. We spend 30 minutes, 60 minutes, sometimes 90 minutes.
Pejman Katiraei: Some people spend two hours per patient, which is great, but unless you want to go broke and be homeless as a provider, you have to charge for your time, which means that holistic care right now becomes expensive, sometimes very expensive. By automating all of the things that right now we as holistic providers do in person manually. We sit there and we ask a million questions. We sit there and we write out recommendations. Holistic minds automate everything down to, you want to send a dietary recommendation, dietary recommendations are there. Provider clicks. One thing, dietary recommendations are sent to the patient.
Jodi Cohen: Holistic Minds is for the practitioner, not for the mom That’s listening. That’s like, I want to help my kid.
Pejman Katiraei: For both. Oh, it’s…
Jodi Cohen: For both. Oh, it’s
Pejman Katiraei: Yeah. It helps the providers serve patients, but it’s also for families to now get access to this care.
Jodi Cohen: Oh, I love this. So for all the moms that are listening that are like, oh my goodness, this is my child. This is something I haven’t thought up, they head over to what’s the URL that they can go find it at?
Pejman Katiraei: So wholistic minds, W-H-O-L-I-S-T-I-C, and then MIND s.com. (wholisticminds.com)
Jodi Cohen: This is amazing. This is such a gift. We could talk for hours. I’ll have to have you back, but thank you for everything you’ve shared. I’m sure you’re going to help so many people.
Pejman Katiraei: Thank you. I appreciate that. I know we’ve talked about this before, offline, both of us, just our hearts sink. Sink, we feel sad because there are so many people out there who are struggling. There’s so many people who are desperately looking for answers, whether it’s for themselves or for their kids. My kid has autism, my kid has…
Jodi Cohen: Or their sister or their husband.
Pejman Katiraei: We’ve reached this place where it sadly seems like there are more people who are sick and struggling than people who are healthy and thriving. So part of why I was so happy to join you in this discussion is I know both of us are on the same mission. We want to help people get better, and I’m happy to be here to hopefully help people get there.
Jodi Cohen: Well, I mean, one of the gifts of today is I think there were so many things that you mentioned that resonate that people never considered they could fix. They just assumed, oh, I’m an introvert, or, oh, I’m sensitive to sound. Or, oh, I go to the mall and I can’t stand those bath stores or whatever. It didn’t occur to them like, oh, this could be my histamine overreaction, and I can modulate that. So I feel like that’s a huge gift. Thank you.
Pejman Katiraei: Of course. Of course. And as an extension to what you said, sometimes when families come in and either there’s a reservation and they’re not really sure they want to jump in or whatever else, sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll say, Hey, just take these supplements. Take the America plus or minus the Histamine Digest and give it a few weeks. If after a few weeks, kind of like what you experienced, if after a few weeks, all of a sudden the parent is like, either I’m more calm, right? Oh my God, my anxiety, my irritability, my sensory issues, or my kids’ issues, whether they’re labeled with autism or whatever else get better. That then creates the space to say, well, gosh, okay, things got better. What is now the root cause of all of this stuff that either myself my family member or my kid have been living with for all these years?
And then we go digging to ask the harder questions of like, okay, these supplements worked, and sometimes they work really well. Sometimes they work 30, 50%, and that kind of depends on what’s happening within the gut and the environment. But if the change happened, then let’s ask why all of this happened in the first place and get to that level when even more magical, remarkable changes come, and I mean, I’ve had kids that were failing out of school, literally at the bottom of the, the class suddenly become the top student. They’re reading. Their math skills are off the charts to the point where the teachers are like, what the hell is going on? This kid was flunking. I’ve had a bunch of kids that had what we called regressive autism where eye contact, expressive language, and other things were essentially lost, and now these kids are within a six to 12-month period of time regaining these skills, and it’s all to say, it’s not for me to toot my own horn. It’s more all of these things are possible. There’s so much that’s possible.
Jodi Cohen: Yes, I love that message of hope. No, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my blog at vibrantblueoils.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you vibrant Health.
