Like many of you reading this, I have experienced a significant health crisis that threatened to rip everything away from me. Years ago, I got so sick that I became completely disabled seemingly overnight, and as I lost my health, I also lost the career I’d built over more than a decade, and I was told I likely wouldn’t have any more children. It was devastating and confusing, and the medical system had very little in the way of concrete answers. I have never felt so alone.
I didn’t “just” have fatigue and brain fog. I had full-body symptoms, new diagnoses for conditions I’d had my whole life, but which had never been this debilitating. I suddenly developed multiple new autoimmune conditions I’d never had before. I had exhausting anxiety that came out of nowhere, which was clearly a chemical reaction with heart palpitations, sudden tunnel vision, and fainting. I became chemically sensitive, light-sensitive, and food-reactive overnight. Friends, doctors – even some family – thought I was exaggerating or making it up. But unfortunately, these symptoms were very real. I was bedridden and needed a wheelchair to leave the house.
The diagnoses started piling up – Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Small Fiber Neuropathy (SFN), Sjogren’s Syndrome, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lyme Disease, and mini strokes that had me undergo evaluation for everything from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) to brain tumors.
And then we found out that there was mold in our house. Our dream house – a fixer upper we had purchased with all of our savings scraped together, in a foggy and damp coastal city in California, which we had spent the last 3 years gut renovating.
But What’s the Root Cause?
I was overwhelmed and beside myself with a litany of symptoms and conditions and no clear answer to what was truly causing this. Was it all due to the mold? The virus that preceded this spiral into debilitation? The genetic conditions and mutations I was born with? The Lyme Disease? I’d never even had a tick bite.
I was desperate to heal myself, and stuck in a medical system that didn’t believe that was truly possible.
I set out to research everything I could about root causes and functional medicine and piece together every theory I could get my hands on. Coupled with my bachelor’s degree in psychology and my understanding of the inter-relation between the immune system and the nervous system, I believed I could figure it out.
Through years of trial and error, protocols, remediations, and deep inner work, I’ve come to believe that understanding our genetic sensitivity and nervous system wiring is just as crucial as removing mold and ridding our bodies of mycotoxins.
The one theory that helped tie it all together for me? RCCX theory.
Let’s break it down – because RCCX theory just may be the missing link in your healing journey.
Mold Illness and RCCX Theory
I know firsthand how insidious and life-altering mold illness can be, and how complicated healing is when it overlaps with multiple other chronic conditions.
Mold illness, often presenting as Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), is a condition where the body can’t properly detoxify biotoxins – like those produced by mold. These toxins can trigger systemic inflammation, especially in genetically susceptible individuals. Symptoms can include, but are not limited to the following:
But here’s the twist: some people are exposed to mold, do a simple protocol, remove their ongoing exposure, and recover quickly. While others do the same thing and spiral further and further into chronic illness. Why?
RCCX Theory, introduced by Dr. Sharon Meglathery, proposes that a cluster of genes in the histoimmunity complex on chromosome 6 – including CYP21A2, TNXB, and C4 – can predispose people to a host of seemingly unrelated issues: hypermobility (like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome), autoimmune disease, psychiatric conditions, and yes, mold sensitivity. It is estimated that 20% of the population, or 1 in 5, have RCCX genetic mutations that result in a hypersensitive immune system.
Anecdotally (because there are no studies on this), it appears that people with RCCX genes also tend to have a higher rate of HLA gene mutations. HLA mutations can impair the body’s ability to process toxins from mold, resulting in chronic illness. Approximately 24% of the population is suspected to have HLA gene mutations. There is likely a lot of overlap in the 20% of the population with RCCX genetic mutations and the 24% of the population with HLA genetic mutations – meaning many people are dealing with both.
What’s especially interesting is that the RCCX module of the human genome directly affects stress response regulation and the limbic system.
Mold, the Limbic System, and Trauma Loops
The limbic system is the part of your brain that governs emotions, survival instincts, and memory. When it perceives danger, whether physical or emotional, it triggers a fight-or-flight response. In people with chronic illness, the limbic system can become hypersensitized.
In those with RCCX genetic mutations, the amygdala – a key part of the limbic system commonly referred to as the “fear center” of the brain – can be overdeveloped and enlarged at birth. This means that people with RCCX genes are both more prone to mold illness and immune dysregulation but are also subject to increased symptoms due to an overreactive fear response.
In short, if you carry certain RCCX variations:
You may have heightened cortisol sensitivity or dysregulation
You could react more severely to mold – even at levels others tolerate
You could react to perceived mold exposure, even when it is not there, due to an exaggerated fear response wired into brain development from birth
So, while detox pathways and immune responses are certainly part of the puzzle, your brain and nervous system are too.
Over time, your brain may start associating harmless stimuli (like a musty smell or a certain room) with danger – even if the mold is gone. This isn’t “all in your head,” but it is happening in your head. Your brain and nervous system are looping in a trauma pattern.
Real Illness, Real Reactions, But a Different Root
Let me be clear: mold illness is real. The inflammation, histamine overload, mitochondrial dysfunction, and mycotoxin burden are measurable and legitimate.
But so is the fear, and so is your brain’s response in controlling your immune response.
In some cases – especially after detox protocols and remediation are done – what remains is a kind of nervous system scar in which your body is still scanning for threats and still reacting to the perceived threat, whether it is actually there or not.
What can you do?
The best way to prevent and reduce continuing chronic symptoms in this situation is to understand the neuroendoimmune system – the connection between the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system – and support them collectively. Primarily, working with the nervous system can provide the most support, as that generates the initial response to the environment, while the endocrine and immune system functions follow.
Managing this may look like working on one’s mindset and patterns of thought around the presence of various toxins including mold, and some may benefit from specific trauma-related nervous system programs, like EMDR. Using Micro Balance Health’s EC3 line of cleaning products can help provide peace of mind around home care, reducing both mold exposure as well as the fear of mold recurrence.
For our children, who have likely inherited our RCCX genetic mutations, this means doing our best to not pass on trauma-based patterns of thought, working to support both their nervous systems and their immune systems (nutritionally and with supplements as needed), and ensuring they understand both their biological and psychological needs.
We are never going to be able to 100% avoid trauma and toxins. But the good news is that we can reduce exposure, manage our own response, and over time, learn to live with and heal our highly sensitive bodies.
About the Author:
Adrian Davidson is a health advocate, researcher, writer, and mother of soon-to-be three. Her previous career, which spanned more than a decade, was in project management and planning, where she specialized in strategic funding and data-driven storytelling to develop multi-million and billion dollar public transportation projects. Her career ended unceremoniously when she suddenly became debilitatingly ill at the outset of a global pandemic. She has spent years researching chronic illness and root causes and sharing what she has learned with her growing audiences on Instagram and Substack. She hopes to inspire people through her research and writing to take radical responsibility for advocating for themselves and healing their own chronic conditions. She can be found writing and sharing research on Instagram at @capitalism.and.glitter and on Substack at adriandavidson.substack.com. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology.
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Adrian Davidson is a health advocate, researcher, writer, and mother of soon-to-be three. Her previous career, which spanned more than a decade, was in project management and planning, where she specialized in strategic funding and data-driven storytelling to develop multi-million and billion dollar public transportation projects. Her career ended unceremoniously when she suddenly became debilitatingly ill at the outset of a global pandemic. She has spent years researching chronic illness and root causes and sharing what she has learned with her growing audiences on Instagram and Substack. She hopes to inspire people through her research and writing to take radical responsibility for advocating for themselves and healing their own chronic conditions. She can be found writing and sharing research on Instagram at @capitalism.and.glitter and on Substack at adriandavidson.substack.com. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology.
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