By Tina Paulus FDNP
Have you found mold in your home, work place, or vehicle? Have you been dealing with a mysterious illness for some time before you found it? Are you unsure of where to start with your detoxification of the mold and mycotoxins?
After you have done the testing to see if you have mold and/or mycotoxins in your body, it’s always good to detoxify, but with caution in mold illness as detoxing those mycotoxins can cause a lot of problems as well. But keeping them of course is not a good idea either if you want to get well.
In this article I am going to talk about the specific places you need to detox and easy ways to start that process. You don’t need anything terribly expensive, some great organic food, a binder and lifestyle changes will get you started really well to detox those mold mycotoxins out of the body.
There are organs of detoxification in your body that help it to detoxify anything unwanted. Those organs are the liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph, colon, and skin. Those need to be in good working order every day, since your body detoxifies every day.
Liver
Our liver is our main detoxification organ. It plays the main role in cleaning out all the blood which is where most of the body deposits their toxins to be removed. It must be kept in good working order and given the nutrients it needs to do that.
In mold illness you also want to reduce your toxic load that this organ of elimination has to deal with. So it is good to make sure to stay away from exposure to more mold, mycotoxins, plastics, and chemicals. As well as, foods that are toxic to you and things that feed the fungus in your body like sugar (carbs). These will greatly decrease all your liver has to deal with.
Next, you need to help your liver do its job and protect it from these toxins. Some great herbs for doing that include bitters and milk thistle, preferably organic. Milk thistle protects the cells of the liver, different bitters help flush the toxins out of it. So a combination of those would be great.
Bitters would include things like dandelion root, gentian, goldenseal, and chicory. There are many preparations out there, but a liquid is preferable. Take them about 20 minutes before meals and eat high fiber vegetables first, when you start eating, to catch the toxins as the liver/gallbladder flush them out. You could also take the bitters about 20 minutes before bed, and a binder like a good clean zeolite, at bedtime since the liver does most of its work while you sleep.
You should also eat foods that help your liver to detoxify like dandelion greens, garlic, cabbage, broccoli, beets, salad greens, and lemon juice. Do as much of these as you can every day. Don’t do them in juice form (other than the lemon) as this is a lot of carbs. You need those fibers to catch the mycotoxins and escort them out of your body.
Kidneys
The first thing of course, for the kidneys, would be to drink enough water. Water is essential in all of the detoxification pathways. Drink half your body weight in ounces of water every day. And more if you are sweating. This does not mean just drinking anything, you must drink good clean water that is free of toxins.
Some great herbal helps, would be marshmallow root, parsley, collinsonia root, uva ursi, hydrangea paniculate, cranberry, nettle, and juniper berry. They help with protection and flow.
Some foods that support your kidney function are parsley, cilantro, green tea, and alfalfa. And of course, since your kidneys get their cleaning project from the liver the liver things will help with this as well.
Lungs
Your lungs are responsible for filtering out airborne toxins like CO2, fumes, mold, and allergens. You naturally detox your lungs by simply breathing and exhaling deeply. One of the things I do daily is to set the alarm on my phone to go out into the fresh air (inside air is more toxic generally than outside) and take 10 deep slow breaths. Make sure you are belly breathing, filling your belly full as you can and slowly exhaling as much as you can. Do this as many times per day as you can. Oxygen is a great detoxifier of mold and mycotoxins.
Foods with spicy/pungent flavors and slippery/soothing textures are best for lung detoxification. Those would include turnip, radish, mustard, horse radish, garlic, onions, and cayenne. Some herbs that are great for the lungs would be pleurisy root, peppermint, mullein, thyme, and lobelia. I find that when I feel lung congestion the Alvita brand mullein tea works wonders.
Lymph
Your body’s sewer system removes products of infection, bacteria, virus, and other pathogens from the circulation. Lymphatic congestion is a major factor leading to inflammation and disease. It is very clogged up by mold mycotoxins that your cells are trying to get rid of.
The problem is, unlike the circulatory system that has a pump (your heart), the lymphatic system doesn’t. But that’s ok because we are fearfully and wonderfully made. There are things you can do help your lymph to clean your body well.
Some things you can do for your lymphatic system are to get on an inversion table, herbal teas such as red clover, mullein, goldenseal, ginger, sarsaparilla (which binds endotoxins), goldenseal, cleavers, and olive leaf tea, plenty of fresh produce and other minimally processed foods, get a lymph massage, dry skin brushing, alternate hot and cold in the shower, movement of your body, deep breathing, infrared sauna, loose fitting clothing (especially while you sleep), and really good hydration. See my article specific to taking care of your body’s sewer system.
Colon
The first leg of the journey is to get the drainage started. You understand that that means pooping well, because it is the end of the drainage funnel and should be opened first. You will need the fiber from lots of fresh vegetables, and those should be organic as much as possible to keep from adding to the toxic load. Eat as many as you can every day, especially green leafy vegetables and fibrous things like carrots and cabbage. Those will not only give you fiber, but also the minerals and vitamins you need for all the other processes too.
I know I had real problems all my life with constant constipation and with occasional boughts of diarrhea. That is probably the main reason why I could not get well because I could not eliminate.
You will need to be pooping 2 to 3 times per day to get rid of the toxins. If you are having trouble pooping some really great gentle non addictive herbs are Cascara sagrada bark, Aloe leaf, Rhubarb Root, Barberry root, Black Walnut hull (great for killing fungus also), Senna leaf (be careful not to take too much of this one).
You could also try vitamin C, you just need to take a lot so that it makes you poop more. Try to find one that is not made from corn or anything else that could have mold in it.
Skin
Your skin is your largest eliminative organ, and its job is to sweat out toxins. So the best things to do for this are exercise that makes you sweat, saunas, Epsom salt baths, and drinking enough water to replace the sweating you do. Another thing that is great for the skin detox is dry skin brushing, to get the dead skin cells off.
Foods and herbs that are great for the skin would be sunflower seeds or sun butter, walnuts, purple cabbage, beets, oat straw, and nettle.
Of course, since the skin is not the first place to eliminate from, it also helps to start at the colon and work your way up the digestive detox organs to clean and detoxify them to help your skin out.
I hope this quick article was helpful to you. I did not go real in depth as I have other articles that do that. Please don’t forget this is a journey. Plan and prepare to get it done quickly and well, without any hiccups.
If you have been dealing with mold illness and want to regain your strength and energy so you can live a normal life again, Join the Mold Illness Recovery Facebook Community where we don’t feel so alone and you can get questions answered.
