Staying On Your Healing Journey While In Paradise

Staying on Your Healing Journey While on Vacation

A Guide for Mold Warriors Who Still Want to Live Their Lives

If you’re healing from mold illness, Lyme, or complex chronic inflammation, the idea of taking a vacation can feel… complicated.

You may desperately want time away with your family — time to laugh, rest, and remember who you were before your body became the center of every decision — while also feeling afraid that travel could derail the progress you’ve worked so hard to achieve.

Here’s the truth I want you to hear first:

Healing does not mean putting your life on hold.
And living does not mean abandoning your healing.

With the right mindset and preparation, travel can actually support your recovery.

The Hardest Part: Airports & Airplanes

For most Mold Warriors, airports and airplanes are the most stressful part of any trip — and for good reason.

These environments are:

• Completely out of your control

• Filled with shared surfaces

• Full of people who may be carrying viruses or illness

• Overstimulating to an already fragile nervous and immune system

As you’re healing from long-term mold and Lyme exposure, your immune system is recalibrating — which can make exposure feel frightening.

Practical Travel Safety Tips

• Wipe down all surfaces (armrests, tray tables, seatbelt buckles) with alcohol wipes

• Frequent hand washing to prevent germ transfer to eyes, nose, and mouth

• Avoid touching your face as much as possible

• Bring abortive medications or supplements that can help limit viral replication if you sense something coming on

• Travel-day immune support, including:

  • High-dose vitamin D

  • Zinc

  • Vitamin C

These steps aren’t about fear — they’re about empowerment.

Eating on Vacation Without Derailing Healing

Food matters, especially during recovery — but so does joy.

While traveling:

• Avoid highly inflammatory foods, especially gluten

• Stay consistent with what your body tolerates well

• Allow yourself to live a little without guilt

Healing is not fragile in the way we fear. One intentional indulgence will not undo months or years of work.

On our recent trip, we:

• Stayed completely gluten-free

• Enjoyed fruit and the occasional gluten-free dessert

• Ate in a way that felt nourishing, not restrictive

Progress is lost through patterns, not moments.

Keep Your Body Moving — Gently and Intentionally

Movement is medicine, especially while traveling.

This doesn’t need to look like a perfect workout.

It can be:

• A walk on the deck

• A bike ride

• A sunrise or sunset stroll on the beach

• Gentle stretching

• Or a full workout if your body allows

On this trip, we moved our bodies every day — cardio, weights, abs — but always with respect for where we were in the journey.

Honor your body exactly where it is.
There is no “right” way to heal.

The Biggest Variable: Your Environment

For Mold Warriors, the biggest concern while traveling isn’t food or activity — it’s where you sleep.

Hotels and Airbnbs can expose you to:

• Mold

• Fragrance

• VOCs

• Cleaning chemicals

Unfortunately, it’s often impossible to fully vet a space ahead of time unless it’s a place you return to regularly.

What We Recommend Bringing

• Mold candles

• Portable air filtration (we like Molekule units)

• Small ozone units (used only while you’re out of the room)

• Essential oils to help minimize chemical and fragrance exposure

• Binders

• BEG/I nasal spray

On our cruise to Hawaii, we brought:

• 3 mold candles

• All binders

• Multiple medications

• Oxalate binders

• Digestive enzymes

We spent as much time as possible:

• Outside

• In the ocean breeze

• In sunshine

Nature is still one of the most powerful healers we have.

Supporting the Nervous System (This Matters More Than You Think)

Healing is not just biochemical — it’s neurological.

While traveling, we intentionally supported our nervous system by:

• Doing Gupta meditation every morning

• Using Pulsetto before bed

• Avoiding work inboxes unless absolutely necessary

• Reading books that bring joy (the ones you never have time for at home)

Reducing stress is not indulgent.
It’s therapeutic.

Hydration, Lymph, and Body Care

Travel is dehydrating and lymph-stagnating — especially for those with conditions like lipedema.

Helpful practices:

• Bring your Yeti or preferred water bottle and hydrate consistently

• Dry brushing each morning

• Massage (partner-assisted or professional)

• Lymph support whenever possible

We had planned to use the sauna, but once we saw it was a wet sauna, we opted out.
As a mold doctor, I’m unapologetically anti–steam room.

Listening to your body is always the right choice.

One Final Tip (If You Can Swing It)

Even though we didn’t follow this perfectly on this trip, I still recommend it:

Build a buffer day when you return home.

A day to:

• Unpack

• Reset

• Rehydrate

• Reorient

• Gently transition back into real life

Your nervous system will thank you.

The Most Important Part of All

Take a vacation — even from your healing.

For a little while:

• Forget being sick

• Remember who you were before illness took over

• Laugh

• Rest

• Live

Because remembering joy, safety, and vitality is not a distraction from healing —
it is part of it.

If you’re a Mold Warrior in recovery, you don’t have to choose between protecting your body and enjoying your life.

You can do both.