Mold and Health
Just before Thanksgiving, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced another “atmospheric river.” Emergency situations like landslides and flooding that result from lots of rain understandably get our attention. But another problem we don’t often discuss is how lots of rain can create the ideal environment for mold to grow in our living and working spaces. When mold starts growing, we may not even notice it because it thrives where we don’t usually go, like dark, wet spaces behind walls, basements, and unvented crawl spaces. But regardless of whether we notice it, mold health risks can be serious.
Symptoms of Mold Exposure
Most of us don’t know much about how mold can affect your health. We tend to vaguely know that mold is harmful, but we’re unclear on the details. We might think, for example, that mold spores can cause us to have allergy symptoms like stuffy nose, itchy eyes, or cough, but the majority of us, physicians included, don’t recognize the wide-ranging health outcomes to which mold can contribute. Fatigue, growth delay in kids, chronic pain and headaches, weight gain, insulin resistance, muscle weakness, insomnia, brain fog, and anxiety are among the long list of symptoms that can be associated with mold exposure.
Because this list of mold symptoms of exposure is so long and varied, and mold isn’t something most physicians think about, diagnosis and treatment of mold-related illnesses can be extremely challenging. But for me, mold is top of mind due to my recent health journey, during which I ultimately discovered my symptoms were associated with mold exposure.
In this and the following articles, I will share details with you about mold and health, how it can affect us, and ways to proceed if you suspect you or your child are suffering from mold-related illness.
Mold and Mycotoxins
First, what are molds? Molds are part of the kingdom Fungi, are microscopic, and they live on plant or animal matter. They are part of our natural environment and can be found indoors and out. They play an important role in breaking down and digesting organic material. Molds can multiply by producing microscopic spores that easily float through the air, sometimes over great distances with the gentlest breeze. Mold becomes a problem indoors when mold spores land on a wet or damp spot and begin growing.
As molds grow, some (but not all) of them may produce toxins—mycotoxins—under the “right” conditions. This process of making mycotoxins may have developed to serve as a chemical defense system against insects, microorganisms, and other predators. Some of the molds that produce mycotoxins are commonly found in moisture-damaged buildings. More than 200 mycotoxins from common molds have been identified, and many more are still to be defined. The amount and types of mycotoxins produced by a particular mold depend on many environmental and genetic factors. No one can tell whether a mold is producing mycotoxins just by looking at it. As bystanders to this process, humans can accumulate these toxins in our body tissues, much like being in second-hand cigarette smoke but without the odor.
Mold growth is a risk with any water leak or intrusion (according to the US EPA, it begins growing within a couple of days if not taken care of) or protracted increase in humidity. It thrives in dark, wet environments like behind walls in our homes, in basements, and in unvented crawl spaces, and it loves to grow on paper, wood, drywall, cloth, and other organic surfaces, including at times in our bellies.
My Mold Story
In early 2021, I began noticing a collection of symptoms, including widespread body aches and pains, burgeoning insulin resistance, weight gain, early satiety, anxiety, and sleep problems. I spent months exercising more, eating better, and reducing carbs and sugars in my diet, as well as meditating regularly–all to no avail. I still felt terrible and my labs were concerning. I didn’t have a clue what was going on, and with no family history of metabolic syndrome and no personal history of stubborn weight gain, I was left scratching my head, and I became very frustrated. Like so many of us in middle age, and against my better judgment, I had begun to chalk everything up to being in my 50s and “getting older.”
Then, after attending a conference on mold illness and purchasing test kits for myself as an exercise in learning more about the process of diagnosing and treating mold illness in patients, I was shocked to see that I had significantly elevated markers. Yikes, AND yay?! It seemed I may have uncovered the root cause of my as-yet unresolved health issues.
Indeed, I began to feel better once I started a protocol to aid my body in eliminating the mold toxins that had shown up in my urine (the most effective way of identifying mold exposure – though there is some debate since this is a new area of diagnosis and treatment). The gnawing and chronic shoulder, arm, and neck pain I’d had for over a year vanished; I could stand up without the stiffness and joint discomfort I had begun to accept as normal; my hemoglobin A1C went from 5.8 to 5.4 in a matter of weeks, and I dropped 5 pounds in the same timeframe; my sleep pretty much returned to normal and I felt far less anxious. I am not exaggerating when I say these changes began within a couple of weeks of beginning a mold/mycotoxin detoxification regimen.
Had I not discovered the upstream cause of my chronic health issues, I may have started taking medication to reduce my insulin resistance and might still be suffering from pain, anxiety, and insomnia. This experience has caused me to reflect on how much unrecognized mold illness may be contributing to chronic health problems. San Francisco is notoriously wet year-round due to foggy conditions, and older homes (some say built pre-1978) are more at risk for mold because they were built with single-pane windows and were badly insulated, so they don’t protect well against the onset of moisture. Here’s a virtual home mold tour you can take to learn a little about where mold may lurk and what conditions facilitate its growth. In San Francisco, mold is defined as a public health nuisance, and the problem of mold is widespread.
Where had I been exposed to mold? At the time, I lived in a newly renovated condo with no known history of leaks, and California was still experiencing drought. However, during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and also in 2021, I escaped to Oregon on several occasions for many weeks to live in an old farmhouse on a beautiful vineyard. When I looked back, I realized it was sometime after my first 6-week getaway that my symptoms had started. I was relieved as this timing likely meant I didn’t need to move homes. I confirmed as much using some simple dust testing.
Got Mold?
In the next article, I will discuss in more detail mold toxicity, as well as the dust test I used. I will also tell you about a 4-year-old who had been developing on track until his as yet unknown mold exposure caused a unique set of worrying symptoms, including marked social withdrawal, separation fears and other anxieties as well as burgeoning learning disabilities, all in a very short time period.
Meanwhile, if you have symptoms that don’t seem to make sense given your personal or family history and lifestyle, please contact GetzWell so we can help uncover the root cause of your symptoms and help you begin to heal. Both Dr. Campagna (our newest staff addition, an experienced naturopathic doctor) and I are versed in diagnosing and treating mold-related illnesses, and we want to help you and your kids thrive