Has anyone treated mold with herbs only?

Everyone and their grandmother seems to recommend the shoemaker protocol, but I:

1. am sensitive to drugs
2. even if I weren't, I have always intuitively felt better with the idea of using herbs and nutrition for healing, and
3. I haven't the slightest clue as to where to find a doctor that would prescribe the cholestyramine or whatever and all the rest.

I say all that to say, I would really appreciate responses that ARE NOT some form of, "just get around it/get over it/suck it up and take the drugs/you can make the drugs work if you do x." I would really like to use herbs and supplements.

I know Buhner mentioned some herbs in a small mention on his site that I am about to try, but that was also years ago and I'm curious if there are any other ideas out there since.

Chlorella and S. Boulardi are supposed to be helpful for mold. I haven’t actually treated for mold though, that’s just what I read.
Bentonite clay is a good binder. You need to have regular bowel movements before starting or it will worsen things, and also need to take it with lots of water.
I am also sensitive to medications and avoid them. I did take bentonite for a while but stopped. I had to take it before bed or I would vomit. I think it was related to activity? Because when I took it before bed I was fine.

I'm so sorry you're in this position, Star_parade. It's heart breaking to me.

You've gotten some good advice, and hopefully I can offer a little more encouragement.

I'm trying to help someone with mold issues, and the key for us is to use extremely small doses of anything that might be antimicrobial - and only use them once every week or two to start, depending on each person.

Detoxing is huge, just like with tick-borne infections. It will feel like you simply can't do enough detoxing, but it gets easier as you go along.

Binders are also of huge importance - we are going to try adding okra root fiber soon- we are already using most of the others.

And watch to be sure you don't have food sensitivities that could be adding to your issues. Seems like many end up with food sensitivities at some point, and it adds to the leaky gut issues, as well as increased histamine issues.

And I completely agree with the suggestion of reading Toxic or anything else by Neil Nathan, or Joseph Brewer. We are actually following the Brewer protocol, which is a little easier on the body than Neil Nathan's protocol.

From what I'm learning, a mold herx is worse than a Lyme/Bart herx - not in terms of severity or misery caused, but in trying to get the body to calm back down. It takes an incredible amount of time to calm the body after a mold herx compared to a Lyme or Bart herx - and I had some real doozies of herxes from Lyme and Bart!! But, I was lucky in that I don't have to deal with mold issues.

Best of luck!!

@Omega33 - Humans had ways of dealing with all kinds of illnesses before the modern inventions of drugs. That said, it's quite clear you read absolutely NONE of my post from the way you responded, so I will just leave it there.

@GoatLady, Traveler, WalkingByFaith - Thank you, I will keep all of this in mind.

@saraeli - Thanks for your recommendations. That makes sense. I haven't read Toxic but I'm mostly just getting ahead of myself. I'm not yet at the stage where I can tackle mold due to constipation, but I was still curious to see if any of the things I was already planning to do would help. As for limbic retraining, I'm not sure how that would help. Can you comment more about your experience with it? Limbic retraining has mixed reviews out there and personally feels scamy to me, but I haven't written it off.

I posted earlier in a rush to get to an appointment, so here's more clarification, just in case it's helpful.

For me, aside from reducing exposure as much as possible, treating mold just meant treating CIRS and MCAS.

Treating CIRS meant:
- taking glutathione and other antioxidants
- stopping inflammatory responses with diet and curcumin
- stopping the influx of toxins of all types
- making sure the usual detox pathways (digestion and biliary tract, urinary tract, etc.) were supported using physical movement, bitters, teas, milk thistle, and regular elimination
- very sparing (in my case) use of binders (chlorella, bentonite clay, and a high-veg diet)

Here's a helpful chart of foods that support the elimination of specific mycotoxins.
https://neilnathanmd.com/detoxification-of-mycotoxins/

Treating MCAS meant:
- taking quercetin, curcumin, bromelain, vitamin C
- nettle tea
- oral cromolyn sodium (only to control acute sever digestive symptoms)
- reducing triggers (overstimulation, exertion, stress, toxicity, etc.)
- strict low-histamine diet (this was HUGE for me) including low-histamine beverages and supplements
- limbic system retraining

I have posted here many times at length about limbic system retraining, so I won't get into it too much, but it's not new or controversial science; it's based on neuroplasticisty, and the same principles with which people treat traumatic brain injuries and strokes. When mycotoxins cause neurological symptoms, the solution has to include not just removing mycotoxins from the body and environment, but also undoing the damage they did, otherwise symptoms can persist long after the mycotoxins are gone. Limbic system retraining can undo some of that damage by creating new (non-symptomatic) neuronal pathways in the brain. A nervous system that's dysfunctional - triggered by infections, mold, or other things - will cause havoc in the nervous system, pain receptors, immune system (via the mast cells), neurotransmitters, digestive system, sensory organs, cognitive abilities, and mood.

The programs train you to use specific movements, patterns of mind, and thoughts to cause physiological changes in the brain. You know how someone might throw up before giving a big presentation? That's the limbic system responding in a very real physical way to a negative thought (nervousness about public speaking). A limbic system retraining program will use good thoughts to produce very real physiological changes for the better. It may seem weird in the abstract to consider a program that harnesses the power of emotions and thoughts to heal the body, but it's all connected in ways that much of the time people are happy to accept: hands shake when you're nervous, butterflies in your stomach before a date, heart races when excited, etc. These programs help you do it in an organized way so that you can target health problems. It made a very big difference for me, but it takes a large amount of commitment, and not everyone is able to stick with it enough to see benefits.

The program DNRS was created initially for multiple chemical sensitivities, CFS/ME, and fibromyalgia, and it's recommended by Neil Nathan and other LLMDs as a way to treat MCAS, mycotoxin illness, chronic Lyme, long COVID, and other concerns that are neurological and multi-systemic.

I hear you star_parade. If there were more surefire approaches to these things, e.g. a specific drug that cured MCAS permanently or rendered all mycotoxins inert in a strong majority of patients, then I would take it. But so many types of treatment are indirect, hit-or-miss, not studied for the purpose I'd be using it for, have gnarly side effects, etc. and as someone who tends to have bad reactions to everything, trying all the drugs most people seem to have to go through before finding improvement doesn't seem like an option for me. I'm envious of people who can take loads of pharmaceuticals at full clinical doses on day 1 and be fine - my mom is one of those people - but I'm definitely not one of those people. (And honestly, my mom is still quite ill!)

I'm not entirely anti-pharma; I just learned the hard way that it's not an approach my body tolerates, and it has made me worse far more often than it has helped. The industry is reprehensible, but I don't deny that some pharmaceuticals save and improve lives! Cromolyn sodium is a miracle for my digestive MCAS symptoms. I'm grateful that I have had my tetanus booster every time I get a cut. But for me, more often than not, drugs are not the answer.