Holy Spaceballs! My Function Health + Claude memberships found a defective HVAC installation causing mold in my home and inflammation in my family
I just posted about how cool it was that Claude has a Function Health connection. Well, buckle up, cause this is insane.
I was most interested in some conflicting expanded heart panel numbers. Claude had the best analysis of everyone who had tried (Function clinician, 2 cardiologists). Awesome, had some actionable insights I could implement immediately.
One number, though, hs-CRP, it flagged as contributing and potentially causing other issues asked if I wanted to dig in. I said Yes! because my other biomarker testing from Choose Health, which is just 6 markers every quarter that I've been doing since 2020, showed last summer/fall my hs-CRP jumped for both me and my wife and we were struggling to understand why.
We tried different lifestyle changes to affect the number and nothing was having a big effect. We were so stumped. How could it go from essentially zero for both of us for 3-5 years, then jump to 'elevated' (1.5-2.5) last summer/fall, and stay that way until now.
So Claude and I did some troubleshooting with other Function Health results, running through potential issues. One of the 'less likely' was environmental. But all of the higher risk ones checked out as not the cause through other FH blood results. So, Claude asked, has anything changed about your house or work in the last year?
It clicked. We had an HVAC air handler replaced last summer. For a few months now, occasionally when the downstairs A/C kicked on, there would be a faint musty smell. I knew it could be something in the ductwork, but also knew it was a big project to find out. Last month I found my son sleeping in another room. I asked what's going on he said there was a leak and the dripping was keeping him up.
Ummmm, first, always notify me of water leaks anywhere immediately, kid. haha I inspected, saw it was likely from the air handler above his room. Go up to inspect and the secondary drain pan was completely full and overflowing. Checked the secondary drain first to triage the issue and realized the HVAC company never hooked that up. Not great. Then checked the main drain line. it was clean. water flowed fine. Very weird! I also noticed that water was dripping into the secondary pan from the corner of the main housing body. I thought there was like a direct overflow to secondary connection, but I'm no HVAC specialist.
Opened up the main housing and found that the main drain pan was mostly empty. Very confusing. the drain line worked, but it was slightly higher than this drain port on the other side of the drain pan that seemed to just go out into the main housing body. Pressed on the bottom insulation and it was completely saturated with water. Ok, got it, gotta plug that other drain port and probably fix the leak. tried some styrofoam laying around, I think taht was probably mediocre. A week later went back and insulation still wet so got caulking to do a good job with it.
So, leak fixed. I just moved on, really. Until Claude troubleshoot. When was this air handler replaced? Last summer. When did symptoms start? Last summer/fall. For two people in the house, at the same time. This air handler leak was causing systemic inflammation, probably in all of us, but verified by Choose Health/Function Health in two of us.
Claude & Function solved a health problem caused by air quality in the house caused by a defective installation of an air handler. So crazy!