Mold’s Mycotoxin Series – Part 2: The Clue We Keep Overlooking in Chronic Disease
I might lose you as a reader when I admit this, but I do believe we’ve retrieved alien technology—think Roswell, 1947. Stay with me for a moment. Let’s assume it’s true, and you retrieved it. Your task would be to figure out what the technology does, how it works, and how to replicate it. Essentially, you’d be reverse-engineering this foreign tech. Now, when someone comes to me as a patient, my job is no different.
In my first book, Functional Medicine: the New Standard, I detail the essential steps leading toward what my traditional Allopathic (M.D.) training taught me: naming and tagging a “disease.” But simply naming a disease is like identifying alien technology without understanding how it works (or got there) and, most importantly, how to reverse heal it.
Medical textbooks describe diseases in great detail—their symptoms, impacts, and progressions. They rarely address the two most important questions: How did we get here? And How do we reverse it? They might outline ways to manage symptoms (namely via medications) or slow progression, but healing is often left off the table. Over a decade ago, I became disenchanted with this partial detective work. I didn’t want to treat patients—I wanted to heal them.
In my book, I use a reverse-engineering methodology to show how, before disease development, two distinct immune pathways often play a critical role: inflammation and auto-antibodies. These protective mechanisms, meant to shield us, sometimes turn against us, causing harm or attacking the body. But here’s the catch: for these pathways to activate in the first place, a breach in our “walls” of defense must occur.
What are these walls? They’re the mucosal linings of our GI tract, lungs, skin, and brain—working synergistically with our bacterial allies, collectively known as the microbiome. And no, your microbiome isn’t limited to your gut, as many believe. (I’ll write more about that in a future newsletter.)
So, what breaches these walls of defense? That’s where I introduce in my book the S.T.A.M.P. Triggers:
S - Stressors
T - Toxins
A - Allergens
M - Microbes - i.e. Mold's Mycotoxins
P - Poor Diet
Over the years, I’ve found that addressing Poor Diet—the “kitchen”—is often the most impactful starting point. But when that doesn’t fully move the clinical needle, it’s time to look under the other S.T.A.M.P. stones. One stone is MICROBES, and too often, I’ve overlooked Mold's Mycotoxins due to my own biases I shared in the previous newsletter.
Mold and their attached mycotoxins have been called “The Great Masquerader” by the World Health Organization. Why? Because they mimic a range of illnesses and conditions that are incredibly challenging to diagnose and treat.
Mycotoxins impact human health in ways most physicians overlook, and this omission has limited our success in reversing diseases—especially autoimmune and neurological conditions. Ongoing research is starting to wonder if mold may also be a central driver in Long COVID Syndrome due to people hunkering down inside more than usual, increasing the inhaled mold spores with their attached mycotoxins.
In the next newsletter (this Wednesday morning), I will review the essential nuts and bolts. I promise it will be informative and intriguing, not dull.
For those of you who want to dive into the complex science behind mold, I recommend the work of Andrew Campbell, M.D., one of my newest teachers, who has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers on this topic over the past 30+ years.
This series on mold's mycotoxins is about first bringing mold back into our consciousness of health thought, then educating; finally, I will touch on the diagnosis and management of how we can work together not to leave this stone unturned, acknowledging its place in human disease, if necessary.
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Grateful to be your physician guide.
Kevin Hoffarth MD, IFMCP
Author: Functional Medicine: The New Standard
Owner: BioFIT Medicine, Austin TX