Do Binders Like Cholestyramine Work for Mold Toxicity?

Mold detox advocates have entrenched themselves around their particular ways to treat those who have been exposed to these natural toxins. Who, though, is right? One researcher looks solely to a pharmaceutical called cholestyramine. Another tries to a variety of binding agents.  A third eschews any binder and just advocates anti-fungals.  The outcome can be as confusing any political struggle, and it’s your health on the line.  This article offers 1 piece of evidence why we at Sanctuary use a mix of binders, including, but not limited to, cholestyramine. 

Several practical problems make choosing a binder a little more challenging.  First, there are dozens of mycotoxins which affect humans, with different ones having different molecular structures that bind better with different therapeutics.  Second, many patients have exposures to more than one mold toxin, meaning they may need more than one binder or a binder that absorbs all toxins present.  Third, much of our research looks to animal studies in the agricultural industry, data we have to extrapolate to humans.  This is not unusual in medicine, as scientists often test animals before humans, but the proportion is particularly heavy with mycotoxins because we have a multi-billion dollar industry trying to keep animals healthy and heavy to sell at market.  We take studies from their industry and do our best to apply the information to humans. 

Once we recognize these obstacles and do our best to apply reasonable inferences to humans, we watch how patients respond.  Thankfully, it appears that there is more than one way to skin a cat and more than one way to detox a human.  (No offense to cat lovers.) With mold, once we’ve identified the specific toxin, we have some flexibility to find which binder therapy is tolerated and effective for the person sitting in front of us.

Back to the study in the spotlight.  Researchers wanted to find a mix of binders, knowing that one single binder would not cover every toxin. Therefore they wanted a binder combination which could remove as much of the common animal feed toxins as possible.  Testing what came out of an animal eating pounds of grain with varying amounts of mycotoxin contamination was not feasible, so they did their testing in test tubes with similar conditions to that of a farm animal stomach.  By simulating stomach acid in the test tube, they combined different binder mixes with a measured amount of mold toxins.  They looked at different aflatoxins, including Aspergillus, ochratoxin A from aspergillus, zearalenone from fusarium, and deoxynivalenol (also from fusarium mold species).

They looked at clays which are known for binding mycotoxins, choosing bentonite as the one with best profile for binding due to its molecular structure.  They looked at cell wall products of Saccharomyces yeast including glucans and mannans which are known to bind mycotoxins.  They looked at humic acids, a decomposition product of organic material with complex structures.  Their best performing mix of binders contained a mixture of 70% modified bentonite, 20% yeast cell wall, and 10% humic acid.  It removed 97 to 98% of each aflatoxin, 94% of the ochratoxin, 97% of the zearalenone, and 97% of the deoxynivalenol, starting with a slightly larger amount of each toxin than they expected to be in the animals’ actual feed.

This success rate was comparable to other commercial toxin binders on the agricultural market, though they do not name these commercial binders.  One other comparison with these commercial binders that needs to be further explored is whether this natural binder also absorbs nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals.  The paper notes that many commercial binders are know to bind nutrients as well.

The paper further references a separate systematic review of 68 publications, looking at different binding agents.  The findings of that review indicated that activated carbon (charcoal) had the highest absorption capacity, followed by clays.

This paper does not provide a definitive answer for which binder is best for your specific mycotoxin, but it does suggest that a mix of binders has a higher potential of working than any single binder.  In helping our patients restore a healthier more abundant life, we think this multi-binder approach has been very successful and makes sense with studies like these.  Not everyone gets better on a single prescription binder, and not everyone needs antifungals, but an experienced mold detox provider can help pick out the best detox agent for the individual and guide them through using it.  That’s our daily method.

Original Article:

Feizy, J., Rahimi, A., Tabari, D. G., Zarghami, M. R., Jahani, M., & Moradi, E. (2025). Optimization of modified bentonite mycotoxin binders for enhanced adsorption efficiency under simulated gastric and intestinal conditions. Scientific reports, 15(1), 27513. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-13249-z