Mike Feldstein

Everybody's stuff was exasperated.

So if someone had asthma, they were having asthma attacks for sure.

So if they already had like respiratory stuff, it was going to be way worse.

If they had autoimmune stuff, it would be very flared up.

Kind of like...

What I like to explain is most of the things that are bad about eating bad food or drinking bad water are very similar to breathing bad air.

It's just this another toxin source that you introduce to your body that kind of triggers everything.

So yeah, respiratory stuff was the most heightened.

And then anyone elderly that was like on CPAP machines was really struggling.

Babies were really struggling.

So like the most vulnerable populations were put over the edge.

And then people who were generally healthy were just like unwell.

So if it's a wildfire smoke, like your lungs can burn a little bit, skin stuff, itchy eyes, rashes, autoimmune flare up.

So it's really like across the board.

It's kind of like heavy metals and stuff.

If you don't have a detox protocol, then it can stay in there and be a problem.

And mold's not usually one of those things that is acute.

it's more of like a chronic long-term thing yeah so if if you sleep in a moldy hotel room one night it's definitely going to mess you up for the night you know you'll have a bad sleep you might get headaches brain fog a little bit of rash but you'll be okay a couple days later it'll clear out but when you're living in a moldy environment

then it's just really gets gets inside you.

I've almost never seen someone who's done a mycotoxin or a mold test from like a urine or blood analysis that didn't have some amount of mold.

It's just like it's omnipresent.

But yeah, it definitely stays in you for quite some time.

Yeah, I didn't realize it at the time because my I mean, when I go to these like disaster zones, we were working like 18 hours a day and living a pretty unhealthy lifestyle for a few months at a time.

And yeah, mold.

But for us, heavy metals were really bad, too, because it wasn't just the 5000 homes that burnt down or it wasn't just a million acres of trees that burnt.

or the 5,000 homes, but everything in every house was gone.

So when you would drive down a street after a wildfire zone, all you see is chimney stacks.

Piles of ash and chimney stacks.

So where's the WD-40?

Where's the paint cans?

Where's all the cleaning chemicals?

Like, literally, the cars, the fuel, everything in everyone's homes, the factories...

kind of got into the smoke and makes it like a toxic plume of smoke.

I got like I still have a little bit of it.

It gets triggered now by like gluten.

I have a bit of psoriasis and that got triggered after this wildfire in 2016 and like living in that environment.

I have, and I probably am due for another one now.

So an air purifier is one of the tools, but there's actually a lot of stuff that people can do like for free at home immediately.

And I think the main thing is just starting from air awareness.

So like broadly, there's outdoor air pollution and there's indoor air pollution.

So outdoor pollution is your mold, your pollen, your allergens, the rubber from the tires, the chemicals, the factories, just like general pollution.

Then indoor air pollution is all the off-gassing from the furniture, the carpets, the flooring, the paints.

Pretty much anything manufactured has an off-gassing period.

Pets, cooking, cleaning products, the list really, really goes on.

And if you think about homes,

We've, since the 70s in particular, we started building our homes, optimizing them for energy efficiency.

Yeah.

So the problem is we're trying to keep the cool in in the summer and the warm air in in the winter.

But the problem is we keep everything in.

So we have all the outdoor air comes in, the pollen, the allergens, the mold, the pollution.

Then we all have the indoor pollutants.

And our homes are basically like Tupperware bags.

Like they're like little plastic bags or Tupperware boxes.

So everything gets trapped inside.

Here in Austin, when we do allergy testing in the spring, if we test someone's carpet or even like a couch material, there's typically more pollen inside than outside, even on a bad allergy day.

So you see like a bad allergy day, they're like, stay inside, stay inside.

You're like...

You have just as much, if you weren't filtering your air and cleaning your surfaces well, you have just as much allergens, if not more, indoors than outside.

And outside, we have the sun, UV light, we have the wind, the rain, and the trees.

Those four things make up nature's air purifier, which is the real air purifier, which is also why our logo is a tree.

Because we should not need air purifiers.

If we built our homes better and we polluted less and we didn't cut down so many trees, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Yeah, and I think the same way people check the temperature.

People think about weather as the temperature, sun or cloud, and will it rain?

I always look at air quality.

Now Tesla, Google, Apple, everyone's starting to report on air quality.

It's pretty good.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

You can.

If it's a cloudy, cool day, but the air quality is super good, then it kind of makes me happier because I'm like, it's cloudy and it's cool and it's rainy, but the air is super fresh.

I'm waterproof.

Let's go outside.

But if it's like sunny, but the air is horrible, maybe we'll go for a walk, but maybe not run today.

So just kind of increasing that little bit of air awareness.

And yeah, indoor air particularly is...

Very poor.

So the things that people need to think about is there's fresh air, which you can only get by ventilation.

So to answer your question about windows and doors and stuff, if it's obviously in Austin in summertime, we're not opening our windows.

It's too hot.

So if it's not too hot, not too cold, and the outdoor air is relatively clean, then yes, open your windows, like get fresh air.

And especially when you're cooking.

And on that note, people should test their range hoods.

More than half of people's range hoods don't actually work.

So if you take it, just take a tissue, do a tissue test, turn your range hood on, hold it up to the vent and make sure it's actually pulling the tissue up and then make sure it's venting outside because often that thing is venting into the crawl space.

It's venting behind your wall.

It's like a little microwave one that's like venting in the cabinet above or in your attic.

It's not actually venting outside.

It's just putting it in another room.

And if you can, when you're cooking, especially if you're boiling stuff, use the back burner because the range hood does collect much, much more from the back burner.

The shower, when you're using your bathroom fan, run it for like two hours after your shower because all that humidity and make sure that vents outside to those often vent into attics because you shower.

Think about how much water a towel can soak up.

So when you're done showering, there's like a gallon plus of water just like on your towel, in the shower floor.

And then if it's not exhausting outside, that just goes inside and that contributes to your mold growth.

So a few reasons, definitely like a nonstick pan is worse, not clean food is worse, but even if you're using your grass fed, grass finished steak with organic oils and everything, no seed oils and you're doing all the things right, high heat and protein creates a lot of byproducts.

So there's chemical compounds that are created like PAH, which is polysilic aromatic hydrocarbons, and a bunch more stuff.

Same stuff that we'd be testing for after wildfire smoke.

So there's a lot of chemical compounds that aren't the food and aren't the oil that get created from the proteins and the heat.

And then that gets embedded in your carpets and your furniture.

Anything in your home that can get wet and absorb water also absorbs air.

And then the other thing to consider is just because you can eat something, it doesn't mean you can breathe it.

Because when you eat something, you get your digestive system to break it down, pull out the nutrients, filter out the rest.

When you breathe it, it's really harsh.

Our respiratory system is not as robust as our digestive system.

So just because you can put something in your mouth doesn't mean you can put it in your nose.

Yeah.

um which is why when someone's cooking if they can yeah doors and windows open for sure or you know if you don't have that that's that's when purifying your air becomes much more mandatory but there's still no substitute for fresh air and ventilation so i should put a jasper in the kitchen because we make a ton of red meat living room it will be the craziest

Pets have allergens.

So just right off the bat, the pet dander, their fur is problematic.

And a lot of people actually who think they're allergic to cats end up being allergic to cat litter, not cats.

So I thought I was allergic to cats.

I wasn't.

I was allergic to cat litter.

Well, go look at the chemical sheet of like a dust-based plumping litter.

It's literally like the worst chemicals ever.

And then kitty goes, there's like a plume of kitty litter smoke.

And then you smell it throughout your whole house.

This is good.

This is good.

So yeah, cat litter messes up a lot of people, myself included.

Then purifying the air helped.

You can also switch to like a grass pellet-based litter.

There are.

Then the downside is it tracks all over your house.

But now they make these little mats that are like...

They almost look like foam.

They're textured.

So by the time the cat walks away from the litter box, most of it's fallen off.

And then dogs, on the other hand, they go outside.

So take this picture for a sec.

Would you ever take a blanket, go outside with your blanket, rub it on the grass, soak up some nice glyphosate, find some dogs, rub it on their butt a little, rub it on some trees, rub it on some roads, and then shake it out in your bed at night?

Yeah, that sounds like a likely cause.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, dogs get allergies too.

So yeah, the dog is like this sponge that you put out into the world, soak up all the beautiful glyphosate, and then wring it out in your bed at night.

And most people sleep with their dogs.

So on our air quality quiz, it's like, do you have any pets?

If it says yes, dog, cat, or both.

And then if they say dog or cat, we're like, do you sleep with your pet?

Like, we know you do.

And then if they say yes, we'll like email them about that.

Because...

Yeah, that's like a huge source of introducing allergens into your bedroom.

So keeping your dog groomed is going to be super helpful.

But I always tell people you can either keep the dog out of the room and if the dog is in the room, that's like a mandatory situation to filter the air.

Because it's not like you're eating the stuff.

Same with mold.

We can go back to that after.

Like you're not eating the mold.

You're not drinking it.

You're not rubbing it on your skin.

The dog, you might be kind of rubbing it and maybe making out with your dog after it eats roadkill.

So maybe that is the culprit here.

Eek.

I never had a dog.

That doesn't surprise me.

I'm sure that we're in Austin.

There's definitely like a holistic wellness dog groomer.

At least brush it, maybe HEPA vacuum a little.

Yeah, you're right.

I don't think you need a chemical potion up the dog, but I feel like just like a mechanical clean would be beneficial.

Yeah, I should probably implement that.

At least the groom.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Same way mold shows up differently in different people.

When I did mold consulting and testing and restoration for a decade, I could go to a house, let's say a family of five.

Two of them could be deathly ill, chronic migraines, fatigue, beside themselves, quality of life destroyed, brain fog.

One or two of them might have like a rash and one of them might be like, I'm fine.

It's kind of an allergen.

Same way, like you said, different things impact people differently.

So it impacts people so differently.

Some people it's like debilitating.

Also, it depends on, you know, how well you –

You naturally detox.

Yeah.

Certain people have certain genes or don't have certain genes that change their ability to like methylate and detox properly.

And then, you know, maybe someone's drinking more water than the other.

And then, but yeah, it definitely varies depending on the person dramatically.

And if they've had a big exposure event and then, you know, it kind of is an everywhere problem.

If you live coastal, there's a lot of humidity.

Here, there's a lot of mold in Austin.

There's still humidity and high heat.

In Arizona, there's also a ton of mold.

People think there's not.

I see some of the worst mold toxicity in Arizona of anywhere.

Because they are so dry, they don't have a natural, like, they're not used to it.

So then if you get a leak in your house, it ravages you.

But also, all that desert sand used to be underwater.

So if you sampled the desert sand, there's ancient molds that have been there for

who knows, thousands or millions of years.

So often when people have big mold toxic exposure events in Arizona, it's like after a windstorm or a haboob, they have this big exposure.

And when they get their mycotoxin and their blood and all their testing done, the same species of mold in their dust is the same that's in their blood almost unanimously.

So it's kind of like an everywhere problem.

So mold is kind of like a, it's sort of like the new lime.

It's like a thing that if you're sick and you can't figure it out why it's like a, it's like a common culprit, but because it's everywhere, it's way more prevalent.

You're not like, it wasn't like through a bug bite or something or a mosquito or a tick or something.

If you look at the search volume of anything mold related, it looks like a hockey stick.

It's like the Nvidia stock.

It is going crazy.

So the mold awareness is going up.

Mold is much scarier than air.

Even though anyone who's having a mold problem, it's an air problem.

It's not usually the mold on your strawberries.

You can see that stuff.

Like right now we're breathing some amount of mold and that's okay.

There's a certain amount of reasonable mold in the environment.

It's inside, it's outside, it's kind of omnipresent.

So this like black and white approach to mold is a little bit intense.

It's like if you drink tap water, it has chlorine.

So do you rip out your pipes or do you filter your water?

So mold is something that outside, it's not nearly that problematic because with the sun, the wind, the rain and the trees, it's when mold is indoors that it's a big problem.

Mold's not any happier inside than we are or our pets are.

It's pissed off and it wants to get back outside and it will wreak havoc on us to do so.

So yeah, mold awareness is going up a lot, which I think...

is a blessing and a curse.

It's not a curse in the sense that like people were already impacted from it for a long period of time.

It's not like mold.

It's not like it's more humid or hotter and that's creating more mold growth.

It's much more mold awareness.

And I mean, humans spend 95% of our time indoors in this part of the world.

So it's a blessing and a curse.

It's a curse because you got to get outside more.

That's too much time inside.

It's the blessing though, because it's,

You can turn your home into your clean air sanctuary.

You can have clean water.

You can make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary.

It's the one place where you can like dial it in and have it like this wellness sanctuary for not very much money.

So I think investing in that is wise.

Air, I find air quality was lagging water quality awareness by about 20 years.

And I think since COVID it's shrunk into about 10 years.

Like the gap is closing.

And this is the way I look at air.

Like you could go three weeks without food, three days without water, and only three minutes without air.

You eat, let's say, two pounds of food in a day.

You drink like two liters of water, and you breathe like 17,000 liters of air.

People don't really realize that it's the thing we consume most of by far.

Just like water, we drink it and we pee it out.

Air, we breathe it in and we exhale it.

It's very similar.

So there was a study recently in the U.K.,

that showed the average human breathes a credit card worth of microplastics each week.

So sometimes to me it's staggering that people are like really looking at their food and really looking at their water, and you should be, but the amount of stuff that you're getting from the environment and the amount of toxins you're getting from your home and from the air is far more than water and food, exponentially more.

So it's not about neglecting those other things.

And air is also, it's the first thing we do when we're born.

It's the last thing we do when we die.

It's the only thing that keeps us alive all night long.

I call it my sleep fuel.

Finland just did a study in these daycares where just by putting a not even good air purifier in the classrooms, 18% less absenteeism right away.

So 18, 20% basically less sick kids right off the hop.

So yeah, when you go from breathing in and the most amazing thing.

So remember, I don't tell you this part, but I created Jasper originally because

Just for wildfire smoke.

I thought I was going to just, when California would be on fire, we would go there and sell air purifiers and help with that situation because that's the background I was in.

When COVID hit, we were going to launch June 2020.

We ended up launching May 2020.

And for the first year, we only sold to doctors and dentists.

I never in a million years thought I'd be talking about wellness.

This is so much better.

And I didn't think sleep and allergies and mold and asthma would be like the space we were moving into because I over-engineered the product.

I made it for toxic smoke and mold, which makes it, and it had to be beautiful.

It's even more effective.

It had to be beautiful and had to be effective and made from steel.

That was very important to me.

So when all of a sudden, what I didn't think though, with allergies.

So people who are struggling from seasonal allergies, often their allergies are gone.

Right.

Like not just reduced, but like 99% just gone.

Because if someone has seasonal allergies or whatever it may be that's impacting them allergy-wise,

They're getting bombarded 24 hours a day.

Human body, very adapt to handling stresses and trauma and bad air.

We can handle some stuff, but when it's 24 hours a day, it's like a chronic beat down.

So when you look at the mold and the pollen and the cedar fever and all that, you're breathing it outside and then you're breathing even more allergens inside.

So when that mold and the pollen and everything is hitting you 24 hours a day, you don't have any time to rest and recover.

So all of a sudden, when you turn your bedroom or your home into a clean air sanctuary, you really reduce that stress load.

So now your body, which is like a healing machine, if you just let it do its thing, it can recover.

But when it's like it can't get parasympathetic and it can't do its own healing process when it's constantly under attack.

So when you turn your home into a clean air sanctuary or your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary,

and you're breathing 99% filtered air all night long, all those toxin and stress loads come down.

And I love the quote, you can't detox your body if you don't detox your home.

Because it's like running on a treadmill in a gas chamber.

You're doing all the stuff to detox, but you're in a toxic environment.

So you're retoxing as fast as you're detoxing.

So it is massive for sleep.