Health Influencer’s Husband Lost 50 Lbs. in Under 4 Months. When They Discovered the Cause, They Had to Leave Home (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Hannah Holt and her husband, Chase, experienced severe symptoms for almost four months before they realized their home was infested with toxic black mold

• In herself, the health influencer noticed respiratory trouble, a rash and brain fog, but her previously fit husband’s weight loss was the most jarring

• Chase dropped about 50 pounds due to severe gastrointestinal symptoms so extreme that he had to take several months off work

After a week-long vacation in July 2025, Hannah Holt and her husband, Chase, found their Florida home in a different state than they left it in it. The changes — a strange smell, scattered mold spots and some water damage — initially seemed only slight and somewhat typical of a house in Florida during the hot summer time.

When they called for help, they weren’t too worried about the situation. They certainly were not aware of the fact that they were dealing with a black mold infestation, and they wouldn’t discover that reality until several months later, after they’d already experienced the potentially fatal consequences of the toxic fungus.

In July, their building maintenance came and tried to topically remove the mold with bleach, which Hannah, 25, and Chase, 26, only later found out can make black mold even worse. But at the time, they thought the issue was solved. They didn’t see any mold for about a month, which is why they didn’t immediately connect the infestation to any of the physical symptoms that appeared a week after they returned from vacation.

“For my husband, that was the gastrointestinal issues,” Hannah tells PEOPLE. She maintains that she’s not at all exaggerating when she says Chase was running to the bathroom between 50 and 60 times per night, experiencing severe diarrhea and getting little sleep.

He visited the emergency room, where doctors found inflammation throughout his entire colon, which could be a sign of a number of ailments, including ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. Chase was referred to a gastroenterologist, who suggested he schedule a colonoscopy for mid-August.

Meanwhile, Hannah — who works as a health coach and runs her social media page @HannahHoltHealth — started experiencing respiratory symptoms, another type of physical issue associated with black mold infestations. She could feel that something was off with her lungs, and her breathing became worse as weeks went by.

By the time Chase’s colonoscopy appointment rolled around, his symptoms were gone, and the results of his colonoscopy reflected his health. They returned about a month later, and his second flare was far more intense than before.

As Hannah explained in a video from her six-part social media series explaining what happened, Chase was doubling over in pain, experiencing severe dehydration and bleeding internally. He lost weight rapidly.

“The worst part for me was seeing the physical, just watching him waste away,” Hannah tells PEOPLE, noting that he dropped from 174 to 123 pounds of muscle and necessary body fat between July and November.

“The thing is, he was eating over 2,000 calories a day,” she adds. “We were making sure that he was fed. But at the point that it had gotten to, his gut lining, large intestine was so torn up … Everything that he was consuming just wasn’t absorbed whatsoever.”

Hannah’s respiratory issues steadily became more extreme. She also developed a rash around her face, but the brain fog she experienced stands out as particularly debilitating.

“I would just be on a meeting with a client and completely forget my train of thought, completely burned out,” she explains. “And there was no recovering from it. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, that’s what I was saying.’ It was, ‘I don’t remember what I was saying. Please jog my memory because I don’t remember.'”

Doctors concluded ulcerative colitis was causing Chase’s symptoms, though they didn’t explicitly connect it to black mold.

“The way that they described it is UC can be turned on by any stimulus: a virus, bacteria, parasite, mold, mycotoxin exposure, that sort of thing,” says Hannah. It was enough to prompt her to call her landlord and ask for a specialist to come and test the HVAC and surface samples.

On Oct. 15, she heard back from their landlord, who wasn’t able to disclose many details but was able to give them urgent advice. Two days later, they left to stay with Hannah’s family.

“He was like, ‘I can’t give you the mold report. I’m sorry, but between us, you guys should leave. You guys need to leave,'” Hannah recalls. “We didn’t find out that it was definitively black mold … until around Oct. 30, and that was only because our neighbor cornered one of the mold specialists going in and out of our apartment and was like, ‘What’s in there?'”

At one point, Chase’s doctors second-guessed his symptoms and questioned if he even had ulcerative colitis. The lack of medical clarity left Hannah frustrated, and as she admitted in her Instagram tell-all, the health influencer lost sleep, worrying that Chase would die in the night.

In the middle of November, Chase woke up disoriented. “He kept asking me, ‘Am I sick? What’s going on? Why am I so skinny? When do you think I’ll get better? How long has this been going on for?'” Hannah explained in a video. “Keep in mind, this has been on and off since July.”

He had another lapse in memory two days later, this time during waking hours. Hannah and her family decided that if it happened again, they were going to take him to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, but while Chase was lucid, he insisted on going as soon as possible. During the 15-minute drive to the hospital, he fell back into the confused state.

The Mayo Clinic specialists concluded that he was indeed suffering from ulcerative colitis, though the trigger remained unclear. Hannah and Chase believed it was induced by the mold exposure, and though they don’t have that fact officially confirmed, doctors have told them it’s likely the case.

Chase finally returned to work in late January, and Hannah tells PEOPLE that he’s currently focused on building back strength and regaining the weight by “eating like an absolute mad man,” says Hannah, who says she already feels “sharp” again.

“He’s just working on moving, getting out on walks, daily activity, getting back to work. I mean, that in and of itself is the most he’s done in a long time,” the content creator says. “He comes home just so tired and exhausted, but that’s where we are at right now.”

They’re now working with a doctor who specializes in ulcerative colitis and mold exposure to see how they should best proceed to fully detox and rid themselves of mold. The process will start with a mycotoxin test to identify how much of the toxic substance is present in their bodies.

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“In my research, there are long-lasting effects to mold exposure. Some people say, ‘Okay, it took three years for me to fully feel like myself again,’ and others who — like myself — got out of the mold and within two to three weeks,” Hannah says.

Now that she’s feeling better and Chase is on the up-and-up, Hannah feels compelled to spread awareness and hopefully prevent others from enduring what they went through — or worse. She adds, “Just living in that environment without the knowledge that that little spec on the wall can ultimately kill you, if you have the right genetic makeup.”

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