Expert Recap: Mold Illness Treatment
When detoxing doesn’t work, it’s time to look at CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) as the source of your illness. CIRS is a proven illness caused by your body’s inability to expel biotoxins. Here are the most important steps to reclaim your health:
1. Get Out of Exposure: You will not get better if you are still being exposed.
2. Confirm the Diagnosis: A Shoemaker-trained practitioner can help you get clarity.
3. Use Prescription Binders (Not Charcoal): Over-the-counter binders may help with mild exposure, but cholestyramine (CSM) or Welchol are required to bind biotoxins in CIRS.
4. Address MARCoNS and Hormonal Imbalance: Many CIRS patients have MARCoNS (antibiotic-resistant staph) in the sinuses, which must be treated with a prescription nasal spray like BEG spray.
5. Repair Neuroimmune Communication with VIP: VIP is often the final step that brings true cognitive and physical recovery.
Top Strategies to Reclaim Your Health from Mold Illness
How to recover from mold sickness: One patient’s journey
Kara had tried everything. After discovering mold behind her kitchen cabinets, she jumped headfirst into the world of mold detox. Her naturopath recommended binders, saunas, glutathione, and a low-mold diet. For a while, it helped. But the brain fog, joint pain, and fatigue always came back.
That’s when she found Flourish Clinic. What Kara thought was mold toxicity turned out to be something more complex: Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). And her treatment for mold illness needed to shift from general detox to targeted immune and neuroendocrine support.
If you’re reading this, you may be on a similar journey. Maybe you’ve tried detox strategies or taken urinary mycotoxin tests. But symptoms persist. In this article, we’ll guide you through the top mold illness treatment strategies—and explain why a CIRS-based approach may be the missing link to your recovery.
What Is Mold Illness?
Mold illness is a catch-all term used to describe symptoms that arise after exposure to water-damaged buildings (WDBs). These symptoms include:
- Brain fog
- Fatigue
- Sinus congestion
- Muscle and joint pain
- Shortness of breath
- Mood changes
For many people, these symptoms go away when they are out of mold exposure. But for about 24% of the population with a specific genetic profile (HLA-DR), mold exposure can trigger a chronic immune condition called CIRS.
Mold Illness vs. CIRS: What’s the Difference?
If you are constantly exposed to mold, whether that’s at home, at work, or somewhere else you spend a significant amount of time in, you are going to get sick. Your sickness may start with mild symptoms, like a head cold, but over time this can progress to chronic fatigue, brain fog, and other more serious symptoms.
To get better, you need to either remediate the environment, or leave it altogether. Only then will you get better. And if you do find relief after leaving a moldy environment, you are likely suffering from a mold allergy.
But people who are suffering from CIRS don’t get better. Even after moving or remediating the mold toxins, their symptoms continue. This is because their bodies are not able to expel the mold toxins successfully. As a result, their immune system is continually in a state of inflammation. After time, this dysregulated state leads to long term mold exposure symptoms that may be diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, IBS, MCAS among many other syndromes.
In naturopathic and functional medicine circles, CIRS is often treated as a toxicity issue. The focus tends to be on detoxing the body of mycotoxins. Practitioners may recommend:
Activated charcoal and bentonite clay
Activated charcoal has been used to treat poisonings for more than 100 years by binding with the toxin/poison and safely removing it from the body. This is because binding works like a magnet attraction. Positive ions will bind to negative ions.
Limited findings show that substitutes such as charcoal, corella, chitosan and Bentonite clay have the same (-) charge as the biotoxins. This means a strong binding bond between these binders, and the biotoxins that cause CIRS, is substantially less effective or not likely.
Sauna therapy
Sweating in saunas is a popular choice as a means to rid the body of toxins. While it has been shown to have positive effects on many health complaints, there are no scientific studies showing the use of a sauna will promote the excretion of the biotoxins that cause CIRS. As well, saunas trigger a stress response – activating your HPA axis like exercise does. Many CIRS patients have complete intolerance to exercise. The same intolerance can occur in sauna sessions.
However, if you can tolerate a sauna, there are many well documented benefits. Just know that treating CIRS is not one of them.
Glutathione
Glutathione is known by many as a master antioxidant. While it may help your immune system fight molds and their mycotoxins, only binders will get rid of them. However, glutathione can be a good supplement to start your detoxification protocol. Some patients use glutathione as a barometer to see well they’ll tolerate the other supplements.
Mold avoidance diets
CIRS is not caused by mold in foods. CIRS is caused by the continual exposure to a water damaged building. This is also why urinary mycotoxin testing cannot be relied on for an accurate diagnosis. It measures the mycotoxins you have ingested and are excreting. Therefore, anyone who has eaten food with even a small amount of mycotoxins (for example, apple juice contains aspergillus mold species) will test positive for mycotoxins.
So while these strategies can be helpful in the short term, they often fall short because they miss the immune dysregulation at the root of CIRS.
CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) is not just a toxic burden. It’s a dysregulated inflammatory response that continues long after the original mold exposure ends.
This means that unless the immune system is reset, symptoms can linger for years—even if you’ve left the moldy environment.
At Flourish Clinic, we use the Shoemaker Protocol, the only peer-reviewed, data-driven protocol proven for the treatment of mold illness, or CIRS.
Do you think you have CIRS? Book a complimentary 15-minute consult with one of our Shoemaker practitioners!
Mold Illness Treatment: Top Strategies for Recovery
If you’re dealing with mold illness or CIRS, below you will find the most important steps to reclaim your health. It is of upmost importance that these steps are completed in order; you will not get better if you are still in exposure.
1. Get Out of Exposure
This is non-negotiable. You cannot heal if you’re still being exposed to mold, or the other biotoxins that cause CIRS such as actinomycetes, or endotoxins. This means you need to:
- Test your home with ERMI or HERTSMI-2
- Remediate properly (not just fogging or using air purifiers)
- Consider a temporary safe home if needed
Any further steps cannot be completed until you are out of exposure.
2. Confirm the Diagnosis
If symptoms persist after leaving exposure, ask:
- Have I had a VCS test?
- Have I checked inflammatory markers like TGF-beta1, MMP9, and VEGF?
- Do my symptoms fall into 8 of the 13 CIRS symptom clusters?
If so, it’s time to look for a Shoemaker-trained practitioner. The Shoemaker Protocol is the only proven method for the treatment of mold illness, or CIRS. Shoemaker practitioners spend years studying CIRS and the Shoemaker Protocol, and are up to date on the latest scientific advancements and discoveries.
3. Use Prescription Binders
Practitioners not trained in the Shoemaker Protocol will recommend over-the-counter binders to ‘detox’ your body of mold. While these may help with a mild exposure, cholestyramine (CSM) or Welchol are required to properly bind biotoxins in CIRS. CSM and Welchol are used because of their ionic properties that give them the ability to bind to mold toxins.
4. Address MARCoNS and Hormonal Imbalance
Many CIRS patients have MARCoNS (antibiotic-resistant staph) in the sinuses, which must be treated with a prescription nasal spray like BEG spray. Please note this step must not be done out of order. You must be out of exposure, and successfully binding biotoxins to address MARCoNS.
Hormonal imbalance is also common due to pituitary inflammation. Many patients require support for:
- Low MSH
- Low cortisol or ACTH
- ADH/osmolality mismatch
5. Repair Neuroimmune Communication with VIP
Once inflammation is under control and your VCS is normal, Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) nasal spray can be used to repair:
- Brain inflammation
- Oxygen transport
- Cytokine regulation
VIP is often the final step that brings true cognitive and physical recovery. However, patients suffering from mold illness, or CIRS, must not take VIP until all of the previous steps of the Shoemaker Protocol are complete.
Why You Might Still Feel Sick After Detoxing
If you’ve already tried:
- Mold avoidance
- Sauna therapy
- Glutathione
- Mold-free diets
…but still feel unwell, it’s time to consider that your mold illness might be CIRS.
You can learn more about how we use tools like VCS testing and symptom cluster analysis to diagnose CIRS.
The good news? Mold illness is reversible. Once you have the right diagnosis, successful treatment is a step-by-step process based on peer-reviewed science.
Do you think you have CIRS? Book a complimentary 15-minute consult with one of our Shoemaker practitioners!
Final Thoughts
Mold illness treatment is not one-size-fits-all. What works for someone with a mild exposure or mold allergy may not work for someone with CIRS. The key is knowing whether your immune system has been thrown into a chronic inflammatory loop—and if so, treating it accordingly.
At Flourish Clinic, we specialize in identifying and treating mold-related CIRS using the full Shoemaker Protocol. We combine environmental testing, lab work, and personalized care to help you reclaim your health.
If you’re tired of guessing, detoxing, and cycling through symptoms, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to keep doing this on your own.
Ready to start real recovery?
Book a consult with our team today.
Mark Volmer has attained the highest level of Shoemaker Protocol certification, and is one of only two of Canada’s Shoemaker Protocol practitioners. The Shoemaker Protocol is the only scientifically proven method of treating CIRS.
