What Functional Wellness Professionals Need to Know About Mold and Mold Tests

Now that we’re in the cycle of saturating rains and warm temperatures that spur our gardens to grow and keep our flowers blooming, with the dampness, warm temperatures and humidity comes the promise of something less attractive: Seasonal changes create a climate that is conducive to mold overgrowth.

Mold overgrowth in a patient’s home or office is like a bad apple in a basket. For functional wellness professionals, it can translate into a set of symptoms that can be difficult to diagnose.

Consider: The symptoms may point to mold

Let’s say a patient, Annie, comes to her appointment. She complains of extreme fatigue and feels like she’s been sick for months. She’s been to multiple doctors and none can find an explanation for her sickness. Being over 40, and experiencing mood swings and depression, they suggest “hormones.” After all, she’s having brain fog, memory lapse and difficulty concentrating, often considered classic symptoms of “aging.” Her sinus issues and chronic cough are explained as “seasonal allergies.” Changes in her body, such as muscle weakness, vertigo, and difficulty maintaining a comfortable body temperature are explained as “hot flashes.” The sugar cravings, metallic taste in her mouth, digestive issues, and excessive thirst could be caused by “changes in metabolism” or “pre-diabetes.”

What appear to be sensible explanations and an over-the-counter approach to symptoms isn’t helping. In fact, Annie feels she may be getting worse.

The Shoemaker Protocol

Gratefully, Annie found her way to you, a qualified functional medicine and wellness practitioner. As a practitioner, you may or may not be trained in the Shoemaker Protocol, a methodology for addressing biotoxins which cause illness in patients.

Shoemaker Protocol Certification: clinical management of illnesses associated with exposure to biotoxins

But, even if you’re not, you know the dangers. Mold toxicity causes more than symptoms. It causes severe health problems. Some of these include Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), mitochondrial disease and neurological damage, fungal rhino-sinusitus, allergies, and asthma; mast activation cell syndrome and cancer; and a range of cognitive issues causing decline.

As a functional medicine practitioner and holistic wellness advocate, you know that mold toxicity is nothing to play around with.

Chronic Conditions, Deferred Maintenance

One of the byproducts of the age of COVID-19 is a workforce that is spending more hours at home than ever before. That means that the chronic conditions resulting from deferred home maintenance could be creating an environment that is perfect for the mold overgrowth that is common in many homes of the Southern Appalachians.

Ordering a mold test is often the first step a functional wellness professional will recommend. But there are several things that you, as that professional, should know in advance.

First, there exists no parts-per-million standard, or Threshold Limit Values (TLV) for airborne mold contaminants, not from the EPA or any other external authority. That means your patient and how they feel in the space dictates the conditions for optimum wellness.

Second, if visual mold is present, mold sampling is not usually necessary. The visual inspection of the mold often yields the information needed to identify next steps.

Third, a qualified healthier home examiner will work backward from your patient’s symptoms, working to identify and rule out any additional environmental factors that could inhibit healthiness.

But what if a visual inspection – and working backward from symptoms – suggests that testing is needed. What happens next?

Investigate. Locate. Mitigate.

When relying on mold testing as a source of healthiness data, a stand-alone test won’t give you the information you need from a functional wellness standpoint. Prior to mitigation, correction of the underlying causes of mold overgrowth must be addressed. Then, if you and your patient choose a mitigation plan, you’ll need before-and-after testing to measure the relative effectiveness of the measures taken. Depending on the use of the space, multiple tests may be needed for different areas in the structure.

ERMI, HERTSMI-2

There are also two types of mold tests, the ERMI test and the HERTSMI-2. Each yields useful information, and the type of testing you recommend should be based on the type of outcomes you wish to measure.

The ERMI Test is the one most commonly approved by the EPA. ERMI is an acronym for Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. In this test, the single mold sample taken in your client’s home is compared with a random sample of 1,000 homes across the United States. Though it suggests a relative amount of mold, it doesn’t take into account unique environmental conditions in the region. This is a weakness in this type of measurement.

The HERTSMI-2 is also an acronym which stands for Health Effects Roster of Type Specific Formers of Mycotoxins and Inflammagens – 2nd Version. This test uses dust samples to check for indicators of the 5 most prevalent types of toxic mold. When the results come back, a scoring system is used to make sense of the findings as they pertain to your patient’s home. These findings could guide a treatment protocol for detoxification from mold borne illness.

The EPA’s brief guide to mold moisture and your home.

In summation, for the purposes of diagnosis and treatment of mold toxicity, a visible inspection should come first, then, when warranted, be followed by a strategic combination of ERMI and HERTZMI-2 testing prior to and following mitigation.

At A Healthier Home, my team and I welcome working closely with functional medicine and wellness professionals in diagnosing mold conditions to make certain patients are able to maintain optimum wellness in their homes.

We’re here to help.