For those not aware of our Mold Symptom Therapy Guide website, let this Rewriting Mold series serve as a reminder of both what we offer our patients and what we offer the general public in terms of understanding mold toxicity illness. Over the coming weeks, I will be reviewing and reposting sections of our Mold Symptoms Therapy website one or two at a time. It has been over 3 years since I first wrote this 30 plus page guide and posted it online. A few things have changed since 2020 (yes, an understatement), but the basic principles emphasized in 2020 continue with minimal change.
As this provides me an opportunity to update any advancements, it also offers the opportunity for you to ask questions and even contribute to edition number 2 of the Mold Guide. By leaving comments and questions, I can identify areas where I can offer even more to patients and the public in terms of education and empowerment over mold. Please take 2-3 minutes to be a part of helping others restore healthier more abundant lives with your questions and feedback. You can leave comments on Facebook or our website not only for each week’s section, but any section off the website which I have not addressed yet.
This week: Mold and Psychiatric Health
Given the frequency and intensity of emotional symptoms with mold toxicity, psychiatric health deserves extended attention beyond its connection to brain health. Anxiety, depression, panic, fear, Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (PTSD), and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) appear in varying degrees throughout the age span. At times, symptoms can extend into psychosis and diagnoses of schizophrenia. Some individuals fluctuate between these symptom complexes, while others remain trapped in one or two. While medically addressing the root cause of nervous system dysfunction, we must also immediately curb the nervous system issues in the short term in order to make long term restoration a possibility.
While not all cases of such psychiatric diagnoses can be blamed on mold toxicity or even its fellow biotoxins like Lyme disease, Bartonella, or Post-COVID, when one of these biotoxins lies underneath the surface, the psychiatric symptoms are typically more difficult to treat than if psychosocial stressors or genetics were the primary drivers of disease. While the pharmaceutical industry has made it a little too easy to pop a pill and turn on sunshine in life, those with mild toxicity do not find such simple solutions to their emotional symptoms as do others. They have often tried numerous anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications with non-ideal success rates. Some get no benefit or only benefit for a few weeks to months before losing their efficacy. Others get the downside of side effects and eventually give up on medications after multiple such experiences. Left with little hope from the pharma world, they then start looking to natural or other alternative therapies for any hope.
Beyond the failure of conventional medicine to help these symptoms and diagnoses, the treatment of mold toxicity can be an arduous journey and an adequate level of emotional functioning is necessary for ultimate restoration. For example, anxiety or depression may prevent initiation of beneficial therapies through a patient’s anxiety related fear or depression related lack of motivation. Any of the emotional symptoms may interfere with the caregiver’s ability to guide the sufferer out of the darkness. For many, the mental illness prevents their full participation and toleration of the detox therapies and therefore it must be ameliorated for ultimate success. In the long run, detox will usually alleviate mental health struggles, but getting to that point can be challenging. Therefore, we try to help ameliorate emotional symptoms to optimize the patient’s ability to function and to proceed with whole person healing therapies.
In helping our patients emotionally, we employ our standard approach of looking to the best of both natural and pharmaceutical therapies. For some, pharmaceutical options both standard and less commonly used options stabilize the mental health issues enough to proceed with detox. For most, natural supports like 5HTP, theanine, nutritional support, and more can shine light into mental health darkness. Often we also incorporate limbic system therapy to turn down fight or flight responses that keep a person locked in sympathetic overdrive. At other times, we connect patients with counselors who work through different stressors and symptoms. In all our Intensive program patients starting in 2024, we provide health coaching on top of our prior team of support spanning a doctor, a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, nurses, and administrative staffing.
We thus press towards recovery with all the available resources available. As we press into their recovery program, each person with mold toxicity who suffers from mental health challenges requires individualized attention. The above resources allow us to meet most patients where they are and guide them to where they need to be.
In the big picture, mold toxicity can seem like it is stealing our humanity and attacking our souls. Ignoring that portion of the human being will not accomplish the whole person health we are striving towards for our patients. Keeping the insights above in mind is key to the Sanctuary approach.
TAKE HOME POINTS
Psychiatric Health
Multiple symptoms
Anxiety
Depression
PTSD
Panic
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Insomnia
Often more difficult to treat than regular mental illness
Normal meds don’t work
Patients run out of options for therapy
Can interfere with treatment plan
Caregivers require support
Patients need encouragement
Short term therapies lessen the symptoms
The best of conventional and natural therapies
Choosing the right medicine if needed
Incorporating the right natural therapies
Bringing in a team to address the whole person
Adding to Sanctuary’s team in 2024
Individualized approach
Addressing the whole person to prevent mold from stealing our humanity
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
