I want to talk with you today about mold illness and how it relates to leaky gut. Then I am going to give you some ways to help heal that.
I remember when I was at the height of my mold illness that I had horrible symptoms of leaky gut. I could not eat anything but meat and carrots. While I love both I don’t want to eat only those forever right?
Struggling With Leaky Gut in Mold Illness
Have you ever been exposed to a water damaged building? Since there are so many of them in the world, I bet you have. Even if you are not one of the 25% of the population that are susceptible, you can still get sick from it. Some of the main symptoms of mold illness include:
- Fatigue and Weakness
- Lacking in Memory
- Headache
- Sinus Congestion
- Having to go Pee Often
- Sensitive to Light
- Struggling with Concentration
- Tingling and/or Numbness in Fingers and Toes
- Abdominal Pain and Bloating
- Swings in Appetite
- Static Shocks
Quite a few of those symptoms can be attributed just to leaky gut. Let’s compare the symptoms of leaky gut:
- Chronic diarrhea, constipation, or bloating.
- Nutritional deficiencies.
- Fatigue.
- Headaches.
- Confusion.
- Difficulty concentrating.
- Skin problems, such as acne, rashes, or eczema.
- Joint pain.
As you can see this last set of symptoms matches a lot of the first list. I had most of these symptoms and more. It is not fun to deal with all of this.
So what is Leaky Gut?
Simply put, your “gut” (a.k.a. “intestinal tract”) is a tube that makes up part of your digestive system. It’s not as simple as a hose or pipe; it’s an amazing tube made of live cells tightly bound together. Your gut helps your body absorb fluids and nutrients, digests your food, and houses billions of friendly gut microbes.
It’s also selective to what it allows past its barrier. Your intestinal tract purposefully keeps some things from being absorbed, so they pass right on through to the other end to be eliminated as waste. You don’t want to absorb many harmful microbes or toxins into your body, right?
About 70-80% of our immune system is housed around our gut, so normally it’s ready for foreign invadersJ
Absorption of fluids and nutrients happens when they’re allowed through this cellular tube into the blood circulation. And this is great! As long as what’s being absorbed are fluids and nutrients and not mold mycotoxins. The blood and lymph then carry the nutrients to your liver, and then around to the rest of your body; this is so that all your cells, all the way to your toenails, get the nutrition they need to be healthy and grow.
Scientifically speaking, a “leaky gut” is known as “intestinal permeability.” This means that our intestines are overly permeable and allow things through that they normally would keep out. They “leak.”
As you can imagine, this is not a good thing.
So how can Your Gut Become Leaky from Mold?
When you have exposure to mold the ways that you can get leaky gut include:
- Breathing in mycotoxins
- Ingesting mycotoxins
Breathing in mycotoxins
Our respiratory tracts basically consist of two zones:
- The Upper airway. Starts at the nose finishes at the Epiglottis
- The Lower airway. Starts at the Larynx finishes in the Lungs
People who have mold exposure breathe in elevated levels of mold spores and/or mold fragments. In a recent research study on inhaling mold spores, they discovered that the majority of inhaled mold spores land in the upper airway and never reach the lungs.
The mold spores end up in the upper airway where they get stuck to the mucous lining there. Once they are embedded in the mucous, the spores are quickly transferred to the digestive tract for elimination later. Have you ever sniffed in deep and swallowed the snot in your throat?
Ingesting Mycotoxins
Our intestinal tracts are continually bombarded with serious amounts of mold mycotoxins through our diet when we eat meat, farmed fish, poultry, grains, many fruits, and even coffee. Generally the bulk of mycotoxin exposure through the food chain, at least in the U.S. and Europe, is low enough so that our healthy body’s natural detoxification actions through the liver and kidneys can sufficiently clean these mycotoxins from the body rapidly so they don’t harm our body. But most people are not healthy enough.
Either way, those mycotoxins end up in our intestinal tract. This is where they start fighting with our friendly gut bugs, and they enlist the help of pathogenic bacteria and parasites against our friends. Those friendly gut bugs help us to detoxify everything that comes down the pipe, so to speak, so we need them really bad. So let’s give aid to our friendly gut bugs.
How to give aid to our friendly gut bugs and heal our leaky gut?
One thing you need to remember is that this is not just a fight for the life of those friendly gut bugs, but for our own lives as well. We can’t live without them in the specific numbers that they should be. So we can’t afford to lose many of them.
There are a lot of natural ways to improve gut health. Let’s start with what to stop:
- Grains – Grains are among the highest in molds and have all the mold needs to feed it. Gluten free grains are ok.
- Processed foods – They also carry higher amounts of molds and feed them as well. This includes most coffee.
- High sugar fruits – Banana, Grapes, Melons, Mango, Oranges, and Pineapple.
- Fermented foods – Mold spores can readily reproduce in food during the fermentation process. Avoid fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, cheese, sour cream, buttermilk, processed and smoked meats, and alcoholic drinks.
- Dried Fruits – Again, mold can proliferate during the drying process especially with all the fiber and sugars (mold’s favorite meals). Raisins, cranberries, mangos, figs, prunes.
Now let talk about what to start:
- Bind and remove mycotoxins – Certain fibrous plant foods like Kale, Globe artichoke, pumpkin seeds, cruciferous vegetables, Okra, berries, black currants, and carrots. Or you can use specific binders like charcoal, GI detox, or Zeolite.
- Bring in reinforcements for your gut bugs that also rebuild your gut– Probiotics like Megaspore or Bio-Botanical Proflora 4R (I love this one best because it also has herbs to help seal the intestinal lining)
- Eat high fiber food also to feed your friendly gut bugs to strengthen them.
- Make sure you are eating a diverse nutritious diet, gives your body the nutrients it needs to stay in tip top shape.
- If you’re not getting everything you need from your diet, make sure to take the supplements that are right for you at this time. Don’t go without them!
Fight the good fight.
So remember to watch what you are breathing and ingesting. Also, eat right, bind those mycotoxins, and take your supplements and probiotics to get rid of mold mycotoxins and heal that leaky gut.
If you, or someone you know, is suffering from a mysterious illness and want to regain your strength and energy so you can live a purposeful life again, schedule a complimentary consultation with me today. Let me help you bring function back to your health.
Have an abundantly healthful day!
