This is really interesting. I haven't been the same since I stayed in an extremely moldy place and have wondered about fungal infections/candida infection.

What was the remediation, some kind of anti fungal course/Nystatin?

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Aurornis 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I just wanted to say: Be careful going down this rabbit hole. There is a lot of misinformation and pseudoscience on the internet regarding mold, fungus, and candida as an explanation for every vague illness. The candida forums are particularly bad at misinformation. You can find people on internet forums, Facebook, and TikTok confidently explaining how candida explains everything wrong with you and can cause any symptom, but it's not backed by reality. People can waste a lot of time arguing with doctors or trying different antifungals and supplements before realizing that their condition is not candida at all.

	▲	bflesch 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I feel you have good intentions and I appreciate your warnings but it's not like people go down these rabbit holes because they want to. They get pushed away and invalidated all the time by people like you who have the best intentions. Their appearance is uncomfortable, their symptom descriptions are vague and conflicting, and due to limited financial and intellectual resources they cannot express their disease in an optimal way, especially to stressed medical professional. Doctors WANT to help people, but their diagnostic tools are still very limited and they can't/won't do home visits and see in what kind of unhealthy environment people are living in. For healthy people from a stable environment many homes of sick people smell horrible. But if you're financially tied to such a place, and never lived somewhere else you might feel that you're not well but you cannot pin it down. The whole candida thing feels like a strawman to me. For my industry it would be a layperson coming to me with a defective computer and saying they have a trojan on their computer but in fact it is a spyware instead. I wouldn't send them home and be angry at social media to talk about trojans so much, I would help them diagnose the issue "computer problem" and then we see it is technically a spyware. 50% of population has below-average intelligence, 50% of population has below-average education, 50% of population has below-average wealth. The medical system makes it too easy to send these people back home and invalidate their symptoms just because they come with the wrong "tagline" into the meeting. And what doctors are reporting as bad influence of social media is actually that patients know of thousands of others with similar symptoms, so they will be giving more push back against gaslighting attempts by doctors. For doctors it's easier to blame "misinformation" than to actually accept the symptoms listed by the patients and see that the medical profession is far from perfect and that the current lab methods have a lot of room for improvement.

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bflesch 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The following advice assumes that you went to your doctor, reported the symptoms, they did a full checkup incl. CT imaging and sent you home without finding anything (e.g. the famous conversation of "congratulations you don't have cancer!" - "yeah but why do I have these symptoms then?" - "We don't know!").

So from my personal experience your biggest priority should be to reduce exposure, e.g. mask up with an FFP3 mask that properly keeps the mold spores out. If your disease is really exaberated by mold then simply wearing the FFP3 for several hours will reduce your allergic respiratory symptoms so much that you feel it. Of course move places if you can, but be aware that the new place also very likely has some sort of mold, and the mycotoxins are spread out all throughout your stuff.

Trust your instincts, especially your nose to find indoor mold sources - unless you simply can't smell for several years like me. If you leave the house for some hours and come back then you have a short time frame of some minutes where you can literally smell the location of a mold source in your house before the nose swells up again. Youtube has many videos that explain how to find mold. Generally learn about diffusion in wall construction materials and figure out where organic material is used in your house. If organic material is next to something that limits diffusion (plastic, foam, metal, concrete, cement, paint) it is a possible point of water condensation and mold growth. Maybe there is a very obvious high-intensity source of mold like backside of a picture frame on the outside wall or moldy dust in an uncleaned ventilation system. But mold can also be invisible inside the wall, floor, ceilings, wallpaper or furniture. In any case buy or DIY a hepa filter for your home.

Then assess your immune system and support it as good as possible. This means go to a doctor and do all possible traditional bloodwork (Vitamin D, the B Vitamins, iron, minerals) and figure out what kind of supplements your immune system needs but does not get at the moment. Take these supplements and do monthly blood panels to track your progress and check if your symptoms improve. Once my vitamin D deficiency was resolved it was a big jump in life quality.

Do genetic testing to see if you have genetic metabolism issues such as MTHFR, and adapt supplementation of methylfolate / methyl-B12 accordingly. If you're curious you can use promethease to do deep dive into your genetic predispositions, but be aware that the symptoms they list are correlations and not causations.

Stop smoking, alcohol, sodas, fast food. Try to eat more healthy and drink enough water and eat an apple a day (Vitamin C!). If you have trouble quitting smoking/alcohol you need to recognize those as self-medication for underlying issues which should be medicated by a psychiatrist instead.

Please be aware that if your immune system is suppressed, the moment it "starts up" again will feel like your symptoms are getting worse. Suddenly there will be a pain in the sinus, or a light fever, or a weird tingling in some part of your body. Get familiar with the Herxheimer effect which is accepted by medical professionals for bacteria die-off symptoms where people get more sick after antibiotics because the bacteria release toxins when they die. Many argue that the same Herxheimer affect also applies to mold die-off or when the mycotoxins stored in your body are re-released into your bloodstream. Medicine lacks methods to validate any of these claims.

Try not to accept any treament that reduces your immune system (e.g. cortisone or monoclonal antibodies). You want to strengthen up your immune system, and not supress it. You really need to learn to listen to your body and notice when your nose starts tingling or allergic symptoms are starting to hit. Do not do any polyp removal surgery or FESS before blood panels show that your immune system has all needed supplements and your genetic metabolism defects are adequately addressed with things like methyl B12 shots etc. For all the traditional vitamin/mineral lab tests you should be at the upper end of the green range and not just barely on the start of the green range.

The one medication that helped me all along the way was desloratadine - an OTC anti-allergic medication. Coincidentially recent medical studies also showed that desloratadine is highly effective against covid by blocking ACE2 receptor. For me it deswelled my whole respiratory system the same way that monoclonal antibodies did, without killing my eosinophils along the way.

Do not take any anti-fungal medicine, they have significant side effects (some of them are classified as chemotherapy medications - you do not have cancer). If antifungals are adviced there will be a team of well-educated doctors that make you aware of the need because they found a fungal growth.

Do not take EDTA or NAC before your immune system is recovered. They re-release things into your bloodstream your body is not able to cope with and it can really harm your body and mental health.

Do not eat any clay or charcoal or buy salt baths before your immune system is recovered. It is a waste of time. Fix immune system first and track the improvements.

Really listen to your body. Eat healthy and drink plenty of water. Maybe check lead levels of your water supply just to be sure. Read labels of food and get an understanding of how much food is rotting with mold in the factories before it is mushed together and sold to us. If you have skin rashes then sulfur soap bars are a magic trick.

Go to communities such as r/moldtoxicity and read their stories and experiences, especially about finding and remediating the mold sources. Stay away from supposed wonder medications before you fix your immune system and the bloodwork shows that your immune system is fixed.

Finally, mold growth is seasonal and highly dependent on humidity. Every time after it has rained it is really bad. If your symptoms spike in wet season don't get fooled to think you are "healed" just because summer arrives. Mold can also grow outdoors. If you are allergic to indoor mold a hike in the woods can very well put you into the emergency room because your respiratory system simply swells shut. You might live next to some wetlands and the wind blows mold spores in your direction. These are all factors to consider.

Good luck!

PS: If after all this your eosinophils are still high your doctors should triple check you for parasitic infection.

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iyn 2 days ago | parent [-]

Can you add an email to your profile, so I can reach out to learn more? I'm really into air quality and been trying to improve conditions in my apartment. You mentioned that

> Generally learn about diffusion in wall construction materials and figure out where organic material is used in your house. If organic material is next to something that limits diffusion (plastic, foam, metal, concrete, cement, paint) it is a possible point of water condensation and mold growth.

which is super interesting — I've found a couple of electrical sockets in my apartment which have a very strange smell, similar to soil/mold (I've confirmed that with other people, just to reduce the chance that I'm crazy). I'm still trying to investigate/fix the issue, and it seems that you know more about that, would love to learn from you.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, very interesting!

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bflesch 2 days ago | parent [-]

Thanks for your kind words. I've added mail to profile, feel free to reach out.

If you are into air quality monitoring you might like homeassistant either with DIY sensors based on esphome (quite easy if you like very basic tinkering with low voltage) or with some off-the-shelf IOT products. If you just want to have a reliable CO2 sensor I can recommend the aranet4, but unfortunately those are quite expensive.

I had some electrical sockets which were super corroded from the humdity, so that the copper wire turned black even though the plastic wrap of the cable was still on it. The humidity must have moved up the cable for ~10cm. The mold damage that I found a year later was at the same wall, but I didn't mentally connect these two things at the time.

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iyn a day ago | parent [-]

Thanks, I'll reach out!

Re AIQ, I've actually built a couple of devices myself (using different sensors, plantower being the most popular one, but I've played with sensiron and others as well) but I've mostly focused on the PM monitoring.

The sockets that have strange "smell" are actually on the (inside) wall that is the building boundary (i.e. not a wall with a neighbour — these sockets don't "smell"). Still, it's a bit shocking to me that this could happen. Do you know how the humidity "got" onto your wall? How were you able to find out? I'm pretty early in my mini "investigation".

	▲	bflesch a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, it might've been lost in translation but my socket also was located on the inside of an exterior wall of the building. So one side was room other side was outside. If all your problematic outlets are located like this, then it might be a condensation/insulation problem. Obviously you should rule out a leaking pipe, especially if someone created a slow leak by putting a nail into a wastewater pipe, and also rule out a damage to the outside of the wall where rain could come in. Maybe you can find out if there was a change to the exterior walls after the house was originally built, for example someone insulating the building by putting foam mats on the exterior walls during the most recent "renovation", or putting insulation wallpaper on the inside of the exterior walls. When houses are originally built, normally experts ensure with calculations that no condensation problems will happen within exterior walls. But after many decades people think they are clever by putting additional insulation on the exterior walls in order to save some money, or to simply change the style of the building. In worst case, additional insulation will move the dew point towards the inside of the wall, and then condensation of warm+humid indoor air will happen within your exterior wall. If it is a wooden building like it's common in the US this can create a mold problem. But it can also be a problem for stone buildings like we have here in Germany, if a wallpaper of wallpaint is used that prevents humidity that is trapped within the stone wall from evaporating. Once you know what materials were used for your exterior wall, you can use a very nice calculator [1] that will show you if the wall has a condensation problem or not. For this you need thickness and material for every single layer of the outside wall. [1] https://www.ubakus.de/en/r-value-calculator/