Are You the Modern-Day Canary in the Coal Mine?

What is a canary in a coal mine?

In case you are not familiar with this saying..Wiki gives this definition:

An allusion to caged canaries mining workers would carry down into the tunnels with them. If dangerous gases such as methane or carbon monoxide leaked into the mine-shaft, the gases would kill the canary before killing the miners.

A great talk on People’s Pharmacy mentioned this reference in relation to toxins found in breast milk. That is correct, nature’s perfect food, the one most suitable for nurturing the next generation, is highly toxic.

Is this our modern day canary? A warning sign- we need to make changes?

Let me give you some background.

1. Breast milk is very high in fat. We store pesticides in fat. (As an aside, this is one reason why many of us struggle to lose weight– the body does not want to release stored fat toxins into the blood stream. The body has a protective solution–Hold on to the fat stores– Your body is actually protecting itself by not allowing you to lose body fat.)

2. Breast milk is also very easy to obtain and analyze (extracting human fat cells would be invasive), which is why we are “picking on” breast milk (versus other body tissue like blood, fat, etc.)

3. Like cord blood (also now heavily contaminated), breast milk acts as a filter– removing harmful contaminants before they get to baby. Cord blood and breast milk, in my mind, are sacred. Once they have reached measurable levels, we have pushed the system for too long. Two parts of the body responsible for removing toxins, now found toxic, sounds like a canary to me…

4. Breast milk was first analyzed and found toxic back in the 50’s. It is only getting worse.

Now….let’s put it all together.

Breast milk remains the perfect food for a newborn. Yes, even though it is likely to carry persistent toxins like DDT (yes, still today you will find DDT, even though DDT was banned in the 70’s), arsenic, flame retardants, dioxins, and BPA, it remains the perfect food.

But…here is the take home message.

This is not about breast milk being dangerous. Our environment is toxic. Our bodies are toxic. Breast milk represents the increasingly toxic world we live in.

There is never a question about whether to breastfeed or not, in fact , breastfeeding may be the great savior for a developing child in a toxic environment. Research is clear on this. Breast-fed babies are healthier (less autoimmune disease, less allergies, stronger immune systems, better IQ’s, etc) despite the toxins found there.

Any toxic chemical found in our body, fat, blood, urine, breast milk, tells a story…a chemical story. The dry cleaners you worked at in college, the home renovations you did last year, the moldy apartment you lived in…They show up in your system. Let’s change the story–together.

Love this quote by Florence Williams in her book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History. “Our bodies, I learned, are not temples. They are more like trees. Our membranes are permeable; they transport the good and the bad from the world around us.”

Let’s get proactive, get angry, demand change! We should not have to worry about passing a toxic environmental load down to our children.

I suggest– limiting your exposure to the chemicals that you have control over–cosmetics, cleaning supplies, new clothes, furniture and carpeting.

Clean water, fresh air, clean food, movement and sunshine: The 5 foundations– are they on your daily list?

Choose a cleanse/detox program that resonates with you and your family. A program does not have to be drastic to make a difference.

Make conscious choices– as consumers, we have the ability to demand change– with our dollars. Your money is a choice.

Small changes make a Big difference- Trust me.

Where mold fits into this picture

The moldy apartment I mentioned earlier isn't a throwaway line. For some people, mold is the toxin that tips the whole system over.

Mold itself isn't the problem. The problem is what certain molds make. When mold grows in a water-damaged building, behind a wall, under a sink, or in an HVAC system you can't see, it can release mycotoxins. These are small, fat-loving compounds that we breathe in, and like the pesticides and flame retardants above, they don't just pass through. They settle into tissue and stay.

Most people can clear a normal amount and never notice. But a subset of us can't. If your detox pathways are genetically slower, or you're already carrying a heavy load, mycotoxins build up and start driving symptoms that never seem to add up: brain fog, fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, sensitivity to smells and chemicals, sinus and airway issues, joint pain, mood changes, and stubborn weight that won't move. It's often the person who "reacts to everything" and has been told their labs are normal.

Two people can live in the same water-damaged house. One is fine. The other is falling apart. That difference is exactly the canary story, told at the level of one body.

How we actually test for it: the MycoTOX Profile

You can't guess your way through this, and you can't confirm it by looking at a house. We test. In my practice I use the MycoTOX Profile from Mosaic Diagnostics (the lab formerly known as Great Plains, the same lab behind the OAT test many of my patients already know).

It's a simple urine test you collect at home. It measures the specific mycotoxins your body is carrying and clearing. Markers like ochratoxin A, aflatoxin, gliotoxin, and zearalenone, produced by molds such as Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium, and Stachybotrys. Instead of guessing, we get a picture of which toxins are present and how heavy the load is.

That matters because the treatment isn't one-size-fits-all. Knowing what you're clearing tells us where the exposure likely came from, which drainage and binder support makes sense, and how hard we can push. Pair it with the OAT, which flags whether mold is actively colonizing inside you, and we get the full story instead of a hunch.

If you've done all the right things and still feel like the canary in the room, mold is worth ruling in or out. It's one of the most common missing pieces I see, and it's testable.