He was also a regular drinker and smoker, which exacerbates psoriasis symptoms, though he wasn’t ready to give up his habits just yet.
Center for Functional Medicine, practitioners employ “a holistic approach to treat chronic disease, with a focus on nutrition.”
“Going through this process, I learned that, when you have a skin issue, your body is trying to tell you something… and I wasn’t listening,” he says.
That doctor sent Aaron to a nutritionist, who put him on an elimination diet and banned his trigger foods such as sugars. On the elimination diet, Aaron began to gain energy little by little. But it wasn’t enough, so he returned to the doctor, who ran more tests.
The symptoms progress About five years ago, Aaron began experiencing an unusual amount of fatigue. “I’m always a high energy person, I’m always trying to do things, and I don’t like sitting still very much. I just noticed myself having a really hard time and it just escalated from that,” he says.
A New Lease on Life WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY ILENIA PEZZANITI FOR TDS
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literally felt like I was dying, and nobody could understand it,” says Aaron Novak, co-founder of Whiskertin Lighting and now founder of Novak Heating and Cooling. At the beginning of the pandemic, Aaron took a voluntary layoff from the K Company Inc., an HVAC company where he had worked for the last 20 years. Aaron planned on going back to his full-time job but after spending time away, realized that wasn’t what he wanted. Instead, Aaron started his own HVAC company, in hopes he might help other people avoid health problems he experienced.
20 | The Devil Strip
In the early 2000s, Aaron bought a house in North Hill. After a year of living there, he had an outbreak of psoriasis, a chronic autoimmune skin disease that hurries the growth cycle of skin cells and causes patches of thick red skin and silvery scales. “The first time I got it it kind of just exploded all over my body. It was on my face, it was under my arm, it was on my legs,” he says. Aaron says he had never had rashes or skin conditions before, and the outbreak was so severe that he went to the emergency room, where doctors suggested he see a dermatologist, who told him he would likely have psoriasis for the rest of his life.
When he ate certain foods, especially foods with a lot of sugar, his symptoms worsened. Desperate for help, Aaron went to every doctor he could find. He had multiple tests, including blood work and CT scans, but no one could pinpoint what was actually happening to him. Aaron grew anxious. “I’m still managing my life, but I’m deteriorating, and falling apart, and getting sicker and sicker by the day.” In May 2019, Aaron’s fiancé, Kat Sim, called to tell him they were the new owners of the Orchard House on Maple Street. Two months later, the family moved in, but Aaron’s health continued to decline. Getting a diagnosis Aaron found a functional medicine doctor who told him he had SIBO, or small intestine bacterial overgrowth. According to the Cleveland Clinic’s
August 2021 · Vol 9 · Issue #8
Finally, Aaron had a diagnosis: mold toxicity. But his initial relief was quickly dampened by his doctor, who told him healing this kind of damage would be extremely difficult long term. She suggested he test for mold toxicity in the home where he and his family had already been living for eight months. “There are molds that produce toxins, but these need to be remediated from houses. Most other molds are important parts of our ecosystem, and should neither be feared or demonized,” says Hazel Barton, professor and director of integrated bioscience at the University of Akron. Aaron says he and Whiskertin cofounder Glenn Miller spent two years building light fixtures, working above a drain in Aaron’s North Hill basement where he noticed mold had been growing. At the time, Aaron says he wasn’t concerned because he assumed it didn’t affect the rest of the space, so he didn’t consider it a serious health or safety issue. But mold spores can be released into the air, then inhaled, which can lead to serious health issues for people with compromised immune systems, like Aaron, who has celiac disease. “Generally, if people who become thedevilstrip.com
