Mold Detoxification

The best way to effectively clear toxins from your system, including mold biotoxins, is to be healthy at baseline. A nutrient dense, varied diet of whole and healthy foods provides molecules that your liver and other organs need to remove toxins. Exercise promotes anti-inflammatory processes in your body and bolsters healthy immune function. Clean air and water limit the daily burden of toxin processing, allowing better tolerance for mold exposure. Emotional, financial, or professional stress also tax our systems, and those without such stress are more likely to feel healthy.

However, if your baseline is not very healthy, there are steps you can take to help your body heal from mold exposure. It is important to make as many lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, stress removal), that you can. However, sometimes progress on this front is limited and needs to be supported through other methods. These detoxification methods are discussed below.  

All toxins that enter our bodies either 1) stay there or 2) leave the body. Toxins leave the body by one of 3 routes: sweat, urine, or feces. Most toxins are eliminated through the digestive tract: processed by the liver, they’re attached to bile and expelled with our solid waste. Unfortunately, normal digestion involves reabsorption of some bile. Therefore, the toxins bound to the bile can be reabsorbed rather than excreted.

You can minimize the reabsorption of these toxins by taking binders – substances that cause bile and toxins to remain in the digestive system and eventually be expelled in stool.  

 

Activated charcoal, zeolite clay, the algae chlorella, and the drug cholestyramine can each bind and eliminate toxins through stool. Using these products may help reduce the amount of biotoxins in your body. I usually recommend charcoal and bentonite clay because they bind the broadest range of biotoxins, are relatively inexpensive, and cause few side effects.  

 

Make sure to start slowly! Our bodies are constantly trying to detoxify our systems, and sometimes ‘hide’ toxins away in less harmful places. When the body detects binders, it tends to dump these toxins, and you may feel ill as a result when you begin this process.

 

I recommend exercise as a method of detoxification if you are well enough to do so. Studies have shown that exercise helps flush toxins out of the body in urine, and toxins can also be removed through sweating. If you are unable to exercise or to sweat through exercise, and have access to a sauna, you can cautiously try to induce sweat. During this process, make sure to stay hydrated and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Finally, try to achieve alkaline urine by drinking lemon water – alkaline urine is better able to remove acidic toxins including mold.

One final complicating issue involving mold is that our respiratory and digestive systems contain just the sort of dark and moist environments that funguses and mold prefer. I agree with most doctors who believe that it is very unlikely for people with normal immune systems to have system-wide mold infections. However, I also think that people who have been in significant mold exposure often need to address mold and funguses residing in their sinuses and gut. To do this, nasal sprays to assist the microbiome of the sinuses are available, as are probiotics that can assist the immune function of your gut.