Editor’s note: The writer is telling her personal story with black mold poisoning and her healing process, sharing information that she has learned through the articles in this series. She does not have a medical degree, but consults her physician in the writing of these articles.

by Christina Rice

How much mold does it take to make you sick? How do you know if the amount you have found at your job or in your home is enough to be concerned about?

Mold releases mycotoxins, which are toxins, into your body. It is not an allergy.

As you are exposed to mold, your body will accumulate the toxins and will become weaker and less effective in its efforts to fight it. This is why no one is immune to mold.

This is what happened to my husband and I. He lived in the same house that I did for four years and was not as sick as I was, which is why it took us so long to figure out that it was the house making me sick. I figured, if he wasn’t sick, then the problem could not be environmental. Wrong. Everyone reacts differently to mold. It wasn’t until he began to have symptoms that we realized what was happening.

There are 10,000 mold spores in the space the size of a pen dot. I will let that sink in for a moment.

As for how many spores are too many, that depends on you. It depends on how well your body can flush the toxins and how quickly your body reacts to being poisoned.

The difference in reactions is similar to someone with severe allergies. For example, some people can eat a peanut butter sandwich and are fine. Others cannot eat jelly that was spread with a knife that had previously been used for peanut butter without reacting.

You are reacting to the toxins being released into your body. Your body is being slowly poisoned.

The severity of your reaction depends on your body’s ability to flush the toxins and its ability to kill the mold before it starts growing a colony inside your body.

After struggling with infertility, our doctor asked if we had checked our house for mold, stating that mold can cause the same fertility issues we were having. My husband checked the house. He found mold growing up our walls behind the wall paneling. We could not see it and never knew it was there.

We did not clean the mold in our house properly, and as a result, we lost everything we owned. In a future article, I will discuss what we did wrong and what we learned about cleaning mold.

For more information, photos or previous articles in this series, visit twinklensoul.wixsite.com/mysite.