Could Mold Be Making You Sick? What Your Symptoms Are Really Telling You

*Note: this blog was written by me, Mark Volmer. All spelling mistakes, misquotes, errors, and omissions are my own doing. It is not AI generated.*

Rachel had seen nine different doctors in three years. Rheumatology. Neurology. Gastroenterology. Each one ran their tests, shrugged, and handed her a referral slip. She had collected quite the list of acronyms before I met her: CFS, GAD, MCAS, and IBS. Each described a subset of her symptoms. But nothing explained why she was feeling so poorly. Most importantly, even with four diagnosis, there wasn’t a treatment to be had. Just a pill for a problem. And when said pill created a new problem, another pill was prescribed.

When Rachel finally sat down in my office, she slid a list of symptoms across the desk. Fatigue. Brain fog. Joint pain. Sensitivity to light. Night sweats. Tingling in her hands. Shortness of breath. I looked at that list and felt that familiar recognition. Not random. Not psychosomatic. Not stress.

This was mold illness.

Her home, built in the early 1990s, had poly-B water lines. Four years ago, there was a pinhole leak behind the wall in their ensuite bathroom. They noticed water staining and immediately turned off the home’s main water line. A few contractors later, there were gaping holes in her walls and all the poly-b had been replaced with pex water lines. Rachel thought the problem was solved. But that one leak wasn’t dried fast enough. Mold grew. She never saw it. She never smelled it. But her body knew.

And it wasn’t until we had a discussion about her home’s history of water damage that everything started to make sense. All those weird symptoms began in the months following that leak…

If you’ve been struggling with symptoms that don’t add up, or symptoms that no one can explain, I want you to read this carefully. Because what I’m about to share could change the trajectory of your health.

Mold Sickness Symptoms: Why They Look Like Everything Except Mold

Mold sickness symptoms are deliberately misleading. There’s no rash, no obvious allergic reaction, no single clear sign pointing to the culprit. Instead, the symptoms are scattered across almost every system in the body. This is why mold sickness gets misdiagnosed, dismissed, or attributed to aging, stress, or mental health.

Here’s what mold exposure symptoms can look like:

• Persistent fatigue and weakness that doesn’t improve with rest
• Brain fog, memory issues, difficulty concentrating
• Joint pain, muscle aches, unusual cramps
• Headaches and ice-pick pains
• Light sensitivity and blurred vision
• Mood swings, anxiety, appetite changes
• Night sweats and difficulty regulating body temperature
• Sinus congestion, cough, shortness of breath
• Tingling, numbness, and static shocks
• Excessive thirst and increased urination
• Abdominal pain, diarrhea, digestive issues
• Vertigo, tremors, and metallic taste in the mouth

On their own, any one of these symptoms could mean a dozen different things. But when several of them show up together, mold exposure needs to be on the table.

Mold Allergy vs. Mold Illness: A Critical Distinction Most Doctors Miss

This is where a lot of people (including practitioners) get confused. There are two very different conditions that mold exposure can cause, and they require completely different approaches. For a deep dive into mold allergies vs mold illness, check out this post.

Mold Allergy

A mold allergy is an IgE-mediated immune reaction that happens while you’re in a moldy environment. Sneezing, watery eyes, post-nasal drip, coughing, etc. The classic allergy symptoms. The key feature: when you leave the environment, the symptoms go away. Your immune system identified the mold, mounted a response, and when the exposure ended, so did the reaction. An allergist can diagnose this with standard allergy testing.

CIRS: Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome

CIRS is a fundamentally different disease. It’s not an allergy,  it’s a multi-system inflammatory condition triggered by biotoxins produced by mold, bacteria, and other organisms found in water-damaged buildings.

Here’s the critical difference: in CIRS, your symptoms don’t go away when you leave the moldy environment. They continue because your immune system has lost the ability to identify and properly clear biotoxins. It’s stuck in a state of chronic activation, firing off inflammatory signals that affect the brain, hormones, immune system, nervous system, and more.

This is why Rachel, whom I described at the beginning of this post kept getting sicker, even after she moved out of her water-damaged home. The biotoxins were already recirculating in her body. And without the right treatment, they’d stay there.

Why Only Some People Get CIRS From Mold Exposure

Not everyone who lives in a water-damaged building gets sick and this creates a frustrating dynamic. Your spouse feels fine. Your coworker shows no symptoms. So you gaslight yourself into thinking everything is fine… You’ve just been really stressed at work.

It’s not fine. And it’s not just stress. Here’s why it happens.

About 24% of the population carries a specific HLA-DR genetic variant that impairs the immune system’s ability to recognize and tag biotoxins for removal. (source) In these individuals, biotoxins aren’t identified or cleared. They recirculate, triggering an immune response that never resolves. The other 75% of people have immune systems that identify the biotoxins, clears them, and moves on. They may feel a bit off in a moldy building, but they won’t develop CIRS. As soon as they leave the building, their symptoms resolve.

Think of CIRS patients as the canaries in the coal mine. They’re not weak but they are genetically wired to detect environmental danger that others simply don’t register.

Where Is the Mold Coming From?

The most common source of toxic mold exposure isn’t black mold you can see on a shower wall. It’s hidden water damage in the structure of a building. Think behind your drywall, under flooring, in attics and crawl spaces, or inside HVAC systems. Mold doesn’t need much. Condensation on a poorly insulated wall. A roof that lets in a small amount of moisture during heavy rainfall. Elevated indoor humidity levels. These conditions are enough.

Studies of North American buildings suggest that approximately 50% of structures have some degree of water damage. (source) Your home, your office, your child’s school…  Any of these could be a source of ongoing biotoxin exposure.

Common hidden mold locations include:

• Behind walls near plumbing fixtures, especially slow-leaking supply lines
• Attics with inadequate ventilation
• Crawl spaces without proper vapor barriers or dehumidification
• HVAC systems, ductwork, and air handlers: anywhere condensation collects (think: where does warm air meet cool air)
• Window frames and sills in older homes with poor thermal sealing
• Basements and below-grade spaces in high-humidity climates

Here’s the unsettling part: you may not see it. You may not smell it. Toxic mold doesn’t always produce the musty odor people associate with a water-damaged building. Some of the most dangerous species produce no detectable smell at all. (source)

How to Test Your Home for Mold: ERMI and HERTSMI-2

If you suspect your home or workplace is contributing to your symptoms, testing is the right next step. There are two validated tests I recommend:

ERMI: Environmental Relative Moldiness Index

The ERMI test analyzes a dust sample from your home using DNA-based testing. It’s far more sensitive than old-fashioned petri dish cultures. It screens for 36 mold species and compares your home’s moldiness to a national database. An ERMI score below -4 is considered low risk. Above 0 starts to raise concern. Above 5 is high to very high.

HERTSMI-2: The CIRS-Specific Safety Test

HERTSMI-2 was specifically designed to assess whether a building is safe for a CIRS patient. It focuses on the five mold species most strongly associated with CIRS-related illness. A score below 10 indicates the environment is likely safe. A score above 10 suggests ongoing risk of biotoxin exposure and symptoms. For anyone with known CIRS, this is the test that tells you whether a home is safe to return to or live in.

How Is Mold Illness Diagnosed?

Diagnosing CIRS is not something a standard panel of bloodwork will accomplish. It requires a trained practitioner working through a specific diagnostic process. It was developed by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker and is known as the Shoemaker Protocol.

The diagnostic workup includes a validated symptom questionnaire, a Visual Contrast Sensitivity (VCS) test as a neurological screen, and a series of specific blood tests including:

• HLA-DR genetic typing,
• inflammatory markers like, TGF-beta1, and MMP-9,
• hormone markers including ACTH + cortisol, and ADH + osmolality

No single test is sufficient on its own. It’s the pattern across multiple systems that makes the diagnosis. This is why CIRS is so often missed; it doesn’t fit a single-disease model. It requires someone who knows what they’re looking at.

Mold Exposure Treatment: What Actually Works

The first step in treating mold illness is always the same: remove the source of exposure. You cannot treat your way out of an ongoing biotoxin exposure. No supplement, no medication, no diet, no protocol will produce lasting results if you continue living or working in a water-damaged building. The environment has to change first.

From there, treatment through the Shoemaker Protocol follows a specific sequence:

1. Treat with binders: agents that bind biotoxins in the GI system and prevent their reabsorption
2. MARCoNS evaluation and treatment
3. Gluten removal
4. Correct androgen levels
5. Correct ADH and osmolality
6. Correct MMP9
7. Correct VEGF
8. Correct C3a
9. Correct c4a
10. Correct TGF beta 1
11. Vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP)

The process is methodical and it works. Proper sequencing is essential. Al;ways work with an experienced Shoemaker-trained clinician.

The good news: CIRS is treatable. Your symptoms that have been dismissed, accumulated, and compounded over years can be systematically unwound. Recovery is real.

Do You Think Mold Could Be Behind Your Symptoms?

If the symptoms in this post sound familiar, if you’ve been chasing a diagnosis that never quite fits, or treating conditions that partially improve but never fully resolve; I encourage you to take the next step.

Start with our symptom questionnaire to see if your profile matches CIRS. And if it does, reach out. We’re the only clinic in Canada certified in the Shoemaker Protocol, and this is exactly the work we do.

You don’t have to keep collecting diagnoses that don’t explain what’s happening to you. There’s a real answer and there’s a path forward.

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Mark Volmer is the Clinical Director of Flourish Clinic in Cochrane, Alberta, and holds the highest level of Shoemaker Protocol certification. He is one of only two practitioners in Canada certified to deliver this protocol. Flourish Clinic specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of CIRS and complex chronic illness.