My patients often have symptoms resulting from an ongoing exposure to mold biotoxins in their homes or workplaces. It is important to remember that mold is not about cleanliness – spotless homes can be toxic with mold. If you do not feel well, it is a good idea to be diligent about looking for mold. When patients, despite hard work to regain their health, cannot eliminate lingering symptoms and chronic health issues, mold is the number one cause. Patients often cannot believe that mold could be at the root of their lingering illness. They go to other practitioners, trying various treatments, only to return months or years later, saying they have discovered massive mold growth behind a wall, in air ducts, basements, or mattresses. 

 Of course, we are not talking about mold found on sandwich bread or fancy cheese. The small amounts of mold that can grow on food or on the roots of plants can be acutely toxic but do not often cause ongoing illness. Indoor molds are different. They grow where there is little light or air flow to kill or dilute them. With poor ventilation, and given the right temperature and humidity, indoor molds can grow without competition in wallboard, cloth, wood, and paper. Building practices and materials commonly used in the past 60 years let molds to grow very differently than they do in the natural world, allowing larger concentrations of mold and toxic mold byproducts to accumulate in the indoor environments.

 Mold requires dampness to grow. Water intrudes into our homes, schools, and workplaces through six main paths: leaky roofs, poorly sealed foundations, over-sized or contaminated air handling systems, leaky plumbing, pipes prone to condensation, and high ambient humidity. When considering mold as a source of illness, be sure to monitor and account for all possible sources of dampness.

Why Does Mold Make Us Sick?

The reason mold makes us so sick has to do with its role in nature. Molds, yeasts, and other funguses are the world’s decomposers. They produce enzymes that degrade natural materials – paper, leaves, food, cloth, wood, and even drywall. As mold breaks down these materials, it harvests the energy and nutrients in order to fuel its growth. When we come into contact with mold, our bodies react as though there is a threat of being consumed. Mold symptoms arise when our systems go into high alert because of this encroaching lifeform. We react to three different components of mold: proteins used by mold for digestion and protection (enzymes), reproductive particles (spores), and pieces of mold produced when mold dies and fractures (fragments). Collectively these components are referred to as biotoxins.

How the Body Reacts to Mold

The most obvious and well understood reactions to mold are its effects on the eyes, mucous membranes, and respiratory system – coughing, wheezing, burning or itching eyes, and phlegm production, for example. These symptoms often arise from a short-term exposure, where mold can be both an allergen or an irritant. Many patients and their health practitioners believe that the absence of a mold allergy means mold cannot be the source of their health issues. The reality is that allergic-type symptoms are only one of the ways bodies react to mold.  

A different – and potentially more serious – set of symptoms arise when mold particles slowly accumulate in tissues. Tiny mold biotoxins readily diffuse through the lungs and into our bodies. As with any other toxin, our bodies get rid of mold biotoxins through sweat, urinary, and digestive systems. Symptoms occur when the load of mold biotoxins exceeds the capacity of our bodies’ detoxification mechanisms. When mold accumulates in our tissues two things can happen: 

1. Direct tissue damage. Some molds are more toxic in this way than others, with some having known neurotoxic effects. 
2. Immune activation, which can create a vicious cycle of heightened inflammation, discussed below. 

As mold biotoxins accumulate, the immune system reacts because it views mold as an invading lifeform – like a virus or bacteria. It launches and coordinates a series of protective responses collectively called inflammation. This is standard operating procedure for our bodies. We mount this sort of defense daily – germs and other stresses from the environment are constant, diverse, and usually neutralized without our awareness. Once these invaders are neutralized by the immune system our inflammation levels return to baseline.

Unlike a one-time virus exposure, mold symptoms occur when people live or work in an environment where mold biotoxins are encountered over and over again. Chronic exposure inflames our bodies, and never allows for this inflammation to resolve. We get the familiar symptoms of inflammation, fatigue, achiness, brain fog and crankiness, much as we would have with any illness. More exposure causes more accumulation and more reaction. If this reaction continues over a longer period of time, tissues can be damaged, resulting in further inflammation and sometimes autoimmunity.  Because damaged buildings have a variety of mold and other toxins, each person’s exposure is different.  Further, each person’s capacity for removing biotoxins is unique.  Thus, people living or working in the same place can have vastly differing responses to environmental molds.

Continual exposure can cause issues even when people in the building are unaware of the presence of mold. At first, symptoms can be mild and inconsistent, but as more biotoxins accumulate symptoms often become more severe and they take more time to resolve between exposures.