By Peter Kozlowski, MD

In Functional Medicine, the doctor’s job is not to give you pills to feel better, but to help you identify imbalances in your body that are making you sick. Usually, there is too much of something in your body and lowering the body’s burden can oftentimes help you feel better. Working together with the patient, we examine five major areas in their life: food, gut health, hormones, toxins, and mental, emotional, and spiritual health. While they are all equally important in identifying chronic disease, I want to focus now on toxins. Given the mind-body connection, toxins are related to our body, mind, and spirit—detoxing the body can in turn begin detoxing the mind as well.

Toxins come in all forms and sizes. We can create toxic burdens in our bodies through foods we eat. For example, high-sugar diets cause high insulin levels, which results in metabolic toxicity. Toxins can also be chemical, such as heavy metals or mold mycotoxins; biological, such as bacterial, viral, or fungal toxins; physical, such as radiation or trauma; or psychological, such as chronic stress or toxic relationships. Some of these toxins are evident. Others are not so evident and quietly tax our bodies. I have routinely found mold mycotoxins to be one of the most difficult to identify and treat. 

Over 100,000 Species of Mold

Generally, mold seems to be overlooked in the mainstream medical community unless it is black mold. Yet, the most common mold when there is water damage to a building is Aspergillus. There are over 100,000 different species of mold—not all are a threat, but many end up being the major underlying imbalance we find in a patient’s body. Of note, mold reproduces through spores, which can remain dormant for long periods of time until the right growing conditions are available.

Mold testing of your environment typically compares the amount of mold spores outside versus inside your house—more inside likely signifies a mold problem. When someone has an allergy to mold, their immune system is creating a response against the spores. 

But mold also releases mycotoxins, which are secondary metabolites capable of causing disease. Mycotoxins are one of the major defense mechanisms of mold: they defend the mold and attack the body. Mycotoxins can be as small as 0.1 microns, whereas mold spores are between 1 and 20 microns. Consequently, spore testing of your home can give false negatives since mycotoxins are smaller and can be present when spores are not found.

Another major difference is that mycotoxins are not alive, unlike spores, so they tend to be more difficult to eradicate. There are over 400 mycotoxins, most of which are toxic to living cells, but not all mold releases mycotoxins. When high levels of mycotoxins build up in our bodies, they create toxicity, which can present differently in each person.

• Symptoms of mold exposure include:
• Allergies
• Immune system toxicity 
• Neurological symptoms 
• Hormone disruption 
• Cardiovascular symptoms 
• Psychiatric symptoms
• Severe gastrointestinal distress 
• POTS
• 99 percent of people with sinusitis have mold 
• 98 percent with chronic fatigue 

Additionally, mold mycotoxins may cause sympathetic nervous system overdrive, leading to anxiety, rapid heart rate, hunger, weight gain, and insulin resistance. They also cause vagal nerve dysfunction, leading to auditory and visual hypersensitivity, trouble swallowing, gut issues, dizziness, and low blood pressure.

Mold Allergy vs Mold Toxicity

An important distinction to make is that a mold allergy is different from mold toxicity. Just because you are allergic to mold does not mean that you have toxic levels of mold. Similarly, just because you have high levels of mycotoxins does not mean you are allergic to mold. 

Mycotoxins get inside of us via three different routes: ingestion (many foods are moldy, including one of my favorite things: coffee); through the skin (encountering something moldy); and inhalation (the most common route: through our mouth and sinuses). In my practice, I have been helping patients detox from mold since 2016 and during this time I have found airborne exposure to be the most concerning. 

As noted earlier, one reason that mold is difficult to identify is because of the common false negative test results. I have a simple screening question for my patients for mold exposure: have you ever lived in a home that sustained water damage? Not mold but water damage specifically, since in my experience water damage frequently equals mold. 

Another reason mold is difficult to identify is because it is extremely rare that everyone living in a moldy house will be sick. I will frequently hear, “How can mold be the cause of my wife’s autoimmune disease? I live in the house and I feel fine.” Ninety-nine percent of the time in families I work with, only one person in the house is experiencing signs and symptoms related to the mold.

To explain this phenomenon, a metaphor I like to use is that we are all born with a different-sized bucket. The size of your bucket is dependent on your genetics, which I call luck. Some of us are lucky to have been born with a huge bucket and some of us unluckily got a smaller one. Those with a huge bucket may fill it up very quickly, while others with a small one never fill it to the top. When this bucket overflows, it can falsely present as chronic disease. Mycotoxins can fill your bucket very quickly. 

In many people, when the mold exposure stops, the body can detoxify on its own. But I have seen countless patients over the years whose exposure was during childhood and they still have elevated levels of mycotoxins decades later. Parenthetically, the best way to test for mold is urine mycotoxin testing. I use Great Plains Laboratory and highly recommend them. 

Mold detoxification treatment is different in everyone. There are two general steps, and one is consistent with anyone detoxing from mold. First and foremost, stop exposure. Unfortunately, I have found that mold cleanup in your home does not always work out.

When I first learned about mold at an environmental symposium years ago, I was taught the only treatment for a moldy house is to knock it down. I have seen many people spend huge sums of money to remediate only for the mold to come back. This is not an easy conversation to have with a family to tell them to move, and I have seen a number of people choose not to test because moving was not an option. Since then, I have met some mold remediation specialists who seem to offer reliable alternative solutions, but the cost can be exorbitant. 

Step two in detoxing mold is sweating—best through infrared sauna since toxins are fat soluble. Detoxification is a two-phase process that happens in the liver. The detoxification pathway in the liver is dependent on many nutrients, and converts the toxins to water-soluble molecules, which we then excrete through urine, sweat, and stool. To further detox, we include supplements and medications, if necessary, usually for six months or longer once exposure has stopped. 

An interesting note for fellow dog lovers out there, store-bought dog food is often full of mycotoxins. My family has bulldogs—a breed that has a history of allergies and dermatitis. We had been battling with skin issues for 8 years, then I learned about mycotoxins in dog food, so we threw it out and started cooking for our dogs. Happy to report no skin issues in two years!

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Peter Kozlowski, MD, is a Functional Medicine practitioner and author of recently published book, Unfunc Your Gut who uses a broad array of tools to find the source of the body’s dysfunction: he takes the time to listen to his patients and plots their history on a timeline, considers what makes them unique, and co-creates a truly individualized health care plan.

Kozlowski, aka “Doc Koz,” did his residency in family practice but started training in Functional Medicine as an intern. He trained in clinics with leaders in his field, including, Mark Hyman, MD, Deepak Chopra, MD, and Susan Blum, MD. Overall, Doc Koz strives to empower patients to achieve true balance of body, mind, and spirit. His expertise is in gut health, but he also regularly works with food sensitivities, hormone imbalances, and detoxing from toxic chemicals.

Unfunc Your Gut: A Functional Medicine Guide, by Doc Koz, is a research-based fusion of the doctor’s medical insights and mind-body wisdom acquired through his own experience of addiction recovery and treating patients in his clinical practice. Complete with relatable, successful case studies and 50+ delicious recipes that will invigorate your life—simply put—it is an oasis of clear answers in the sea of contradictory online nutritional information. If you’ve been seeking grounded answers to your basic gut-health questions, Doc Koz guides you to boost your immune system, heal your gut, and unlock your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Get ready to Unfunc Your Gut and feel amazing!

References

1. J W Bennett, and M Klick, “Mycotoxins,” Clin Microbial Rev 2003 Jul; 16(3):497-51.
2. Toxins (Basel). 2021 Jan; 13(1): 65. Published online 2021 Jan 15. doi: 10.3390/toxins13010065
3. PMCID: PMC7830565
4. M C K Leung, G Diaz-Llano, and T K Smith, “Mycotoxins in pet food: A review on worldwide prevalence and preventive strategies,” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2006; 54(26): 9623-35.