If you’ve had a sudden downturn in your health, I BEG you to look into mold toxicity.
Maybe you’ve always been pretty healthy and now out of the blue, everything is wrong and you can’t figure out why. Plus your doctors can’t figure it out either.
Or if you’ve had some other underlying illness your whole life such Multiple Sclerosis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome diagnosis. Or maybe you’re like me with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, and wham, suddenly symptoms that were a 4 or 5 are now a 10 or more.
Were things somewhat “manageable” and now they aren’t? If you’ve suddenly fallen off a cliff with your health, you may have unknowingly been exposed to mold.
It’s taken me SIX grueling, pain-filled years to figure that this is what pushed my health over the edge.
What Is Mold Toxicity?
You’ve probably already heard of people getting sick in obvious situations with black mold etc. What you might not know, is that you don’t have to see any mold to get sick.
Mold illness is when you breathe in or are exposed to mold and the toxins it produces. Mycotoxins are the physical toxins they generate. They also give off gases that are toxic. That’s why mold has that musty smell. But it can still be there without the smell. Some doctors refer to mycotoxins as mold “poop.” It’s their by-products.
It can also fall onto your skin and into your food or drink when you are in a building with mold. These are usually water damaged buildings. Researchers estimate that 50% of buildings in North America and Europe have water damage and possibly mold. ALL buildings — houses, hospitals, schools, workplaces, you name it.
Here’s two examples of hospitals infected with mold:
But no building is exempt. This university building was full of mold.
Here’s a guy that died from mold exposure because his musical instrument was full of it!
If your body isn’t super great at detoxing these mycotoxins, they stay and wreak havoc everywhere. Your immune system, your brain, your tissues, everything. You can’t “kill” mycotoxins. They aren’t like bacteria. Bleach doesn’t make them disappear.
Mycotoxins are HIGHLY inflammatory. They are so toxic, they’ve been used in chemical warfare. Oh yeah, they also cause cancer.
Researchers are starting to think that mycotoxins might be behind a variety of illnesses such as:
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: One study on people with chronic fatigue syndrome showed that 93% of the people in the study had mycotoxins in their urine!
- Multiple Sclerosis: This pubmed abstract mentions that mycotoxins destroy nerves and may be the underlying trigger for MS.
- Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis: The antibodies and autoimmune issues with these disorders may be triggered by mold exposure according to this paper.
Take my word for it, mycotoxins make you unbelievably fatigued, sore, and plague you with brain fog.
Mycotoxins can also be in food. Corn, coffee, nuts, and grains are likely offenders. Research suggests that 25% of grains aren’t fit for human consumption. But fruits and vegetables can too. I can’t stress this enough — mycotoxins don’t “DIE” or dissipate! So they can bioaccumulate. You can get mycotoxins from eating animals or animal products that have eaten mold infested feed. (Where do you think the grains go that humans can’t eat? To animals that we eat…)
The whole mycotoxin issue is making me rethink “allergies.” Am I actually allergic to what seems like most foods on the planet, or am I reacting to mycotoxins on/in the food because it’s old by the time it gets to my house? I’ll save that for another post.
Mold Sensitive
Your genetics are one thing that determines how well you detoxify dangerous substances like mycotoxins. (HA! Strike one for me…)
Your liver and kidneys would need to be functioning well to help neutralize the toxins, assuming your exposure was small enough that your body could deal with it. People with Ehlers Danlos don’t have awesome livers. (Lucky me! Strike two…)
I’ll get to what strike three was for me a bit later…
Here’s an interesting video about being sensitive to mold. What’s highly fascinating is the guest on this wellness show goes through the “easy” way to figure out if you are likely mold sensitive rather than doing genetic testing. Those easy tests are also part of the diagnostic criteria for Ehlers Danlos…
He also talks about how easily he can sense mold. Oh my, me too! I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
How Did I Figure It Out?
So a woman that had recently met told me she had been thinking about me over the weekend. She had been listening to a presentation by a doctor that deals with people suffering from mold toxicity. A very high percentage of them also had Ehlers Danlos. Interesting for sure, but I didn’t make a connection yet.
She sent me a transcript of the presentation. I read it and felt like the patients this doctor was seeing sure sounded like me. I went to the doctor dozens of times, tons of blood tests, only to be told my blood work was stellar. People started hinting that what I was feeling was psychosomatic.
Patients would get sent to this doctor because with nothing showing up on routine blood work, so they assumed they must need psychiatric care. Only this doctor didn’t think they needed therapy — she felt what they were experiencing was completely genuine.
They may have had some minor health issues previously. But what had made them become debilitated? Some of them were months away from death it seemed, a few were in hospice care and declining rapidly.
She started looking into their pasts, doing more obscure blood work, and that’s when she found the culprit. They all tested sky high for mycotoxins.
I still wasn’t making the connection for myself. When had I been exposed to a high level of mold and mycotoxins?
My health had tanked when I had surgery to remove a joint from one of my toes that was causing a lot of pain. This was definitely an EDS related issue. But there really wasn’t a reason for me to have become so sick.
I always chalked it up to the 2 weeks of antibiotics the doctor had put me on. Digestive issues were one of my biggest problems afterward. Why hadn’t my gut recovered though?
Then it hit me one day. I remembered how musty that clinic smelled. The doctor was extremely late and as I waited impatiently, I started to count the tiles on the ceiling.
The ceiling looked gross. I remember thinking “yuck, they need to fix that! Obviously their roof leaked big time!”
Oh my goodness! I had SURGERY in a severely water damaged building!!
And the 2 weeks of antibiotics prevented my body from cleaning anything up or protecting me. Strike 3. The mold and mycotoxins had plenty of time to build up and take over. (Remember, mycotoxins don’t dissipate without help, especially if you have certain genetic issues.)
I was overwhelmed. From what I had read, recovering from mold was not quick or easy.
Thank God For HAPPY Endings
God’s timing isn’t our timing. Six years is a long time to hunt relentlessly for answers. But He sure has ways of bringing everything all together for our good.
He brought the person that had the reason as to why I became so incredibly ill. He also brought the way to get healthy again at the same time. 🙂
I found Microbe Formulas on the internet. They had a product called BioTox. (affiliate link) It’s BioActive Carbons latch onto mycotoxins and other garbage in your body. Those things can trip up your metabolic pathways and prevent them from working.
I told my friend that it literally felt like this stuff sucked the intense pain out of my body. This confirmed all the more that it really was mold that had just about killed me.
BioTox was only the beginning. Mycotoxins. Wreck. Everything. But I had hope. I had a plan. And it’s working. As of right now, I’m feeling the best I’ve felt since April 2013.
I can’t remember the last time I had a rash or the horrendous gut pain that would have me huddled on the floor. I still have healing to do but I have my life back! I am a far cry from where I was.
I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to have the answer to WHY I got sick. But I’m more thankful that I have the answer of HOW to heal.
If you have ANY type of health issue, I highly suggest finding your happy ending with Microbe Formulas. (affiliate link) Or maybe it would be more accurate to say happy beginning? I sure feel like I’ve gotten a second chance that I didn’t think was possible.
