Toxic mold may be causing your chronic symptoms like insomnia, weight loss resistance, brain fog, and low energy.
How common is toxic mold? How do I know if I have it? Why can’t I just hide under a chair and not learn this stuff?
Toxic mold cannot be ignored as it has such serious short and long-term repercussions. It’s an ‘inconvenient truth’ if you do have toxic mold, but better to know and heal than suffer worsening life-long symptoms.
In this article, we’ll help you get out of mold denial and take your next best steps as needed.
Mold and Your Genetics
You may have heard of ‘the dreaded gene’ in the discussion on toxic mold. This is the HLA-DR gene you have about a 25% chance of having it.
“If you read Dr. Shoemaker’s books, he describes the underlying cause for Biotoxin Illness as resulting from a failure of a part of the immune system called the acquired immune system to create antibodies designed to remove mold toxins from the body.
Normally, the body is still able to clear these types of pathogens using a backup method that is part of the more rudimentary innate immune system. In this system, the liver pulls the mold toxins out of the blood and correctly dumps them into the colon via bile from the gallbladder so they can be excreted.
Unfortunately, mold toxins are reabsorbed by a recycling process in the body called enterohepatic circulation that serves to reuse bile and bilirubin. Consequently, the mold toxins (mycotoxins) are never eliminated and end up back in the bloodstream. Over time, mold toxins trapped in the body build up and cause massive and numerous inflammatory based health conditions.” (1)
There are other genes that affect your ability to detox besides the HLA-DR gene. One example is the CBS gene mutation, which can allow “homocysteine and other potentially toxic compounds build up in the blood.” (2)
Another genetic mutation that can affect how well you detoxify mold is a mutation in the GCLC gene that helps manufacture glutathione, the important detox antioxidant. (3)
Mold and Your Health History
In addition, your health history will factor into how mold affects you. If ‘your bucket is already full,’ an analogy used in natural medicine and environmental medicine, then mold can be a tipping point into ill health.
Your bucket becomes full of things like processed foods, allergens, infections, environmental toxins, etc. I believe this is possible even with favorable genetics.
You do not need to have ‘bad genes’ to get sick from mold, although you may be less sick than someone with weaker detox genes. You can become sick with toxic mold at any age, I find it can hit older adults harder as immunity and digestion are normally declining with age. (4)
Mold and Your Buildings
This is an excerpt from a past blog, The Mold / Leaky Gut Connection:
“Mold thrives in warm, damp, humid conditions and water-damaged buildings provide a perfectly hospitable living environment. Once established in water-damaged environments, molds spread and reproduce by making spores; the spores are capable of surviving harsh environmental conditions and are notoriously hard to eradicate. (1)
According to a recent report from the Federal Facilities Council, a shocking 43 percent of buildings in the U.S. have current water damage, and 85 percent have past water damage. (2)
This means an overwhelming number of buildings in the U.S. potentially contain harmful molds such as Cladosporium, Penicillium, Alternaria, Aspergillus, and Stachybotrys chartarum (aka ‘toxic black mold’). (3)”
Mold in Your Food
“Unfortunately, water-damaged buildings aren’t the only places where toxic mold is found. Mold and mycotoxins also widely contaminate our food supply. Approximately 25 percent of the world’s crops, including grains, nuts, wine, spices, and coffee are contaminated by mold and mycotoxins.
Mycotoxin contamination of food is caused by poor growing and harvesting practices, improper food storage, and damp conditions during food transportation and processing.” (5)
The eleven most mold-contaminated foods: wheat, alcohol, corn, barley, peanuts, hard cheeses, sugar cane and beets, cottonseed, rye, and sorghum. Mycotoxins are the number two reason food is rejected at the border.
You can’t cook out foodborne mycotoxins! If you suspect mold, it’s best to cut down on any moldy foods. Of the clients I’ve tested, there was one young man I suspected to have current mold toxicity just from diet. He was a vegetarian but eating cheese and bread, and drinking coffee and alcohol. Most of his diet was from potentially moldy foods.
Animals who eat moldy grain will have mold present in their tissues. This is another reason to eat more plant-based and choose wild and pasture-raised meat and fish.
Ergotism, also called St. Anthony’s Fire, was a fungal grain infection that drove many people to madness or death in prior centuries. There was an outbreak in Ethiopia as recently as 2001. (6)
One last sad note, the mycotoxin “ochratoxin,” a metabolite of some Aspergillus and Penicillium species, is commonly found in food crops as well as water-damaged buildings and can be passed through breastmilk. (7, 8)
How Mold Affects the Body
Not all mold is toxic! But an indoor, “artificial” environment without natural competition tends to let toxic mold dominate. The harmful effects of toxic mold are mediated by biotoxins, including spores, cell fragments, endotoxins, beta-glucans, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and mycotoxins.
This can develop a condition coined “CIRS,” Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker. “Shoemaker estimates that 80 percent of CIR cases are caused by repeated exposure to water-damaged buildings. These cases are designated as CIRS-WDB.” (9)
If biotoxins are not tagged and cleared by the immune system, they will be recirculated by the liver. Some effects of these circulating biotoxins include:
Severe activation of the immune system (10)
Cancers
Mutation of DNA
DNA damage to mitochondria (11)
Death of brain cells & other cells
Damage to glial supportive cells in the brain
Increase in blood-brain permeability
Leaky gut (12)
Colonization of the nose and lung
Damaged cellular nucleus
Decreased protection from parasites
Increased odds of Candida, Clostridia and other infections
Infertility (13)
Increased food sensitivities
Possible Symptoms of Mold
As you learned in the previous section, mold is a major disrupter of all body systems. This is why it can create such a diverse range of symptoms. These include:
Fatigue
Foggy thinking & poor recall
Chronic digestive issues
Insomnia
Headaches
Frequent urination
Weight gain
Attention-deficit
Muscle twitching
Anxiety
Depression
Asthma
Sinus congestion
Low libido
Irregular periods
Skin rashes
Nosebleeds
I have listed these in approximate order of most likely to less likely. But it really varies from person to person. In the same household with mold, you could have two healthy people, one with depression, one with skin rashes and another with mental fatigue and fogginess.
What is Mold Denial?
Mold denial is the act of not investigating or not acting in a case of toxic mold for fear of finding out the truth or fear of the feelings, expenses or consequences involved in said action.
Mold denial can happen at any stage of the game--from the inkling you have a problem to when you have it and are deeply affected, but can’t bear the thought of moving.
As I said in the introduction, toxic mold is an inconvenient truth. It’s expensive to address in almost every case. There are some ways to save money, and some situations will be much more costly than others, but it ain’t free to deal with toxic mold.
Reason 1: Financial Hardship
You will often lose your apartment, the home you own, your belongings, your cherished books, etc. And you will pay a pretty penny to fix up that house and replace those things.
Reason 2: Health Breakdown
You’ll have to invest in your health in various ways because the mold won’t leave your body without some effort. You’ll have to rebuild your body systems and your kids and dogs may need treatment. It is usually a long, drawn-out process.
It is no fun to look down the barrel of a future of toxic mold recovery. It’s easier to go into mold denial!
Reason 3: Emotional Stress
Beyond the financial cost, there is a definite emotional cost, although some feel this more keenly than others. My friend Evan Brand lost the brand new house he custom built to mold. As in my own case, he remediated but decided not to stay. But Evan is 100% dedicated to his health, and this decision was not as hard as it could have been.
Reason 4: Collateral Damage
There can also be a cost to relationships and careers. Many people have told me, “I’ll move when my kids’ graduate. I don’t want to disrupt their lives.” This is mold denial talking.
Others have said, “But I love my new job! I can’t help that it’s in a moldy basement. I’ll leave in a few years.” This is also mold denial talking.
How to Get Mold Tested and What to Do Next
Testing Your Home for Mold
If you are just starting to suspect mold in your current space, I suggest starting with testing your space. This could be a car, truck, home, vacation home, or work site.
If there is another place you don’t feel well, like a gym, it’s easiest just to switch gyms. You can give feedback at these locations, but it’s easier just to swap it out.
I outlined testing options in my previous blog, Do I Have Mold Toxicity? Please reference that blog for details on options.
If you’re a renter and find out you have mold, it’s going to be easier to move out. If you have evidence of mold from mold plate testing, this could help you break your lease.
I have witnessed several people fight landlords to no avail. You will need to address your now-toxic belongings before moving.
If you own a home, you may want to invest in more detailed testing and mold inspection as a first step.
Cars and trucks can be replaced. We replaced two of them.
Nowadays there are more options for remediation. These include fogging with essential oils, enzyme sprays and more. Super thorough remediation may allow you to reclaim your space, but I wouldn’t get attached to this idea. We offer resources on remediation in this previous blog.
Testing Your Body for Mold
“Due to the way biotoxins cause illness and the way they move throughout the body and its various systems, more common testing methods like basic blood tests are rarely helpful.” (14)
We specialize in mold testing and physical health restoration at Hormone Detox Shop. There are several options--from straight mold testing to a full panel of testing for environmental triggers. You can learn more about it at this page.
We rely on at-home urine testing for this process and have been very happy with the results.
Learn About Your Mold Testing Options!
Earlier I presented a webinar that covers every option of mold and toxins testing.
You can catch the replay here and learn about:
Preparing for home testing
The urinary testing method
Types of mycotoxins identified
Organic Acids Testing (includes glutathione, Candida, Clostridia, oxalates)
Chemicals Testing (includes gasoline additives, plastics, pesticides)
Ready to test for mold? Test yourself for mold toxicity with this easy, at-home urine test. MycoTOX screens for eleven different mycotoxins, from 40 species of mold, in one urine sample.
Bridgit Danner, LAc, FDNP, is trained in functional health coaching and has worked with thousands of women over her career since 2004. She is the founder of Women’s Wellness Collaborative llc and FunctionalDetoxProducts.com.
Check out her easy 5-Day DIY Detox Guide here!