Intensification is what detox feels like: a deep dive

Probably one of my most-repeated phrases is, “intensification is what detox feels like.” I’ve said this dozens of times on my podcast, and it is a core concept in mold illness healing.

But this phrase is probably also the most misunderstood and misinterpreted of anything I’ve said.

And I realize this may be my fault because it has been very hard to articulate and explain exactly what I mean.

So I thought of a new analogy today that might help.

First of all, “intensification” is a term that was coined long before I heard about mold avoidance. You can learn more about it in the book, A Beginner’s Guide to Mold Avoidance. Intensification is a process whereby people who are healing from mold illness become more “aware” of mold around them, ie, mold exposures become more “intense.”

So here’s the analogy:

Let’s say dogs have been attacking you anywhere you go, but you are so used to it that you don’t even notice it anymore. So you just keep getting bit by dogs and it isn’t intense at all because it is just daily life. Maybe you even take medications to “cope” with the symptoms so you can go on getting bit by dogs without thinking about it.

This is what being “masked” is, i.e. living in mold and not knowing it. This is when you are in a state of high REACTIVITY (the dogs are biting you a lot and hurting you) but low SENSITIVITY (you don’t know it is happening).

(Reactivity is the degree to which mold harms you, sensitivity is the degree to which you are aware it is happening).

The outcome of healing from mold illness is for this to switch – you become much more sensitive (aware of mold) but less reactive (less damaged by mold). This isn’t my opinion. This isn’t “one way to think about it.” This is just WHAT HAPPENS during recovery. Think of it as an immutable law of nature, not as a hippy-dippy alternative medicine thing.

Ok so during “dog avoidance” (going back to my analogy) you finally realize that these dogs are harming you. So you start to be more careful around dogs and stay away from mean dogs. Your wounds start healing up, and you start regaining your strength. Now, if you get bit by a dog you REALLY notice it because your baseline level of health is MUCH higher avoiding dog bites.

Now you are in intensification. Even though you FEEL BETTER and are HEALTHIER, dog bites are still more intense for you than they were when you were just on morphine getting bit by dogs 24/7.

See what is happening here? You can FEEL BETTER and be making health gains at the same time you are in “intensification”. Intensification isn’t a bad thing. (Here is a really interesting experience I had during intensification).

You could also think of this like an alcoholic who got their life back together and then falls off the wagon and realizes just how horrible getting drunk is for their life, because they had been sober for so long.

Or someone who got out of an abusive relationship and gets abused for the first time in a long time, don’t you think that would be an INTENSE experience even though they are overall doing better in life mostly?

Imagine now you are totally healed from all your dog bites. You are a new person. But you have to walk through a neighborhood full of mean dogs on flimsy leashes that could escape and bite you. Don’t you think this would be an INTENSE experience? Of course it would, because there is a huge contrast between how healthy you are now, and how hurt you would be if the dogs start biting you again. Do you see how the INTENSITY of the threat corresponds to you also being much further along in your recovery, compared to the person who is just so used to getting bit by dogs that they just give in to their wounds and take pain medication to cover it up?

The “pain medication” in this case is all the supplements, acupuncture, pills, doctors, IV therapies, special diets, that people with mold illness, Lyme, CFS, are using because they are unable to address their root problem – mold toxicity – and so just use bandaids to cover up all the superficial “wounds.”

The DESIRED outcome of mold avoidance is to be in intensification. This means your body has moved away from the dogs and differentiated itself from that situation, and you are experiencing an acute tension between the “new you” and those “old threats.” That AWARENESS of the threat is going to feel a lot more intense EVEN WHILE your health is going to be getting better for the first time ever.

So this is what I mean by “intensification is what detox feels like.” It could just as easily have been said that that “intensification is what ——— feels like” (replace _ with whatever word you like: dog bite healing, mold illness healing, detox, recovery, etc).

It just so happens that what NEEDS to occur to heal mold illness is “detox,” that is the bottleneck of recovery that never occurs when living in mold. So for mold illness, we say “intensification is what detox feels like.”

But if you were the dog bite person, you could say “intensification is what bite wound healing feels like.”

So you need to understand that the missing link in mold illness – also Lyme, CFS, CIRS, etc – is DETOX.

I will say that again – the REASON you can’t heal your Lyme after 750 antibiotics, 300 doctors appointments, 900 supplements, 45 saunas, and 60 hyperbaric chamber sessions, is that the body has “turned off” the detox switch and is accumulating mold toxins rather than excreting them. And this is the bottleneck for your healing. My son and I were discussing what “bottleneck” means in the context of his gaming computer PC setup. The bottleneck is the part or component of the computer that is the weakest link, meaning that no matter how much you upgrade or improve the other parts of the computer, the gaming performance will be stuck until you address the one problem that is the bottleneck.

And changing LOCATIONS has been found in mold illness to release that bottleneck. Not just to a pretty location or to a location that doesn’t “smell” like mold. But to a location that is free of the specific mold supertoxins that we discuss in this group, which you probably haven’t ever heard of before and which are definitely not even present on all the commercial mold lab “testing.”

And even when you get REALLY far along in recovery, like I feel I am these days, you are STILL in a degree of intensification. You maybe could tolerate a few more dog bites before you get really hurt, but you are still acutely aware of the danger of dogs and you can “sense” the danger – i.e., sensitivity. You use that sensitivity to avoid going back into a situation where you become desensitized to dog bites and regain your “reactivity” to them (being harmed by them).

And REMAINING in this state is how you – begin, succeed, regain, and maintain – health, not just now, but for long term. If the dog bites start hurting you less, fine, you can tolerate a few more of them, maybe you do some parasite treatment that makes you more immune to dog bites (mold), whatever.

But the WAY you regain tolerance to dog bites is not to mindlessly go get bit by dogs and hope it works out OK. You use your mold avoidance skills to learn the warning signs and after effects of particular mold toxins, so that you can start to feel for yourself how much of them you can handle and how long it takes you to recover from them, etc.

This “state” of being in a constant tension with mold – like you’d be in a constant tension with dangerous dogs trying to not get too close – is THE outcome of successful mold avoidance. This isn’t a theory or a new age “you do you, I’ll do me, let’s all get along” life perspective. It is rather simply a law of nature that was “uncovered” and “discovered” about how mold healing WORKS. It is the law that mold doctors want to ignore and instead tell you that you can take a supplement. But as with all laws of nature, things don’t go to well when you ignore them (i.e. a kid jumping off a building thinking they are super man). We SUBMIT to this law whether we like it or not, someone in their sick moldy environment can pretend they are getting better but really they know deep down that they are sliding more and more each year, they are just in denial about it.

Likewise someone who is improving with mold avoidance may not like the approach and may be annoyed by the requirements but they can’t deny the improvements.

That’s because it is a law of nature, not an “opinion.”

So I hope this helps people understand what I mean when I say “intensification is what detox feels like.”

If you are new to all of these concepts, here is a podcast episode I recommend as a follow-up:

https://lymebook.podbean.com/e/mold-secrets-you-won-t-hear-from-a-doctor/