I’ve been yearning to write a post for a while, but I’ve been caught in a bit of an energetic tailspin. Outside of my working hours, I’ve been trying to dig out of a metabolic hole from biotoxin exposure. For about a year I’ve been hammered. Luckily, I’ve been learning and finding resources as I sort of flail in the muck. Water-damaged buildings are much more prevalent than one might imagine and with bigger impacts.
Sleeping in moldy spaces (on a pile of antihistamines), I’ve had nightmares, and I’ve been a nightmare. The inflammation from these unseeable substances is expressed initially as irritability and feels a lot like low blood sugar, high anxiety, and high blood pressure. I would not want to be around myself while I’m in mold, though these days when the symptoms are more obvious I have at least a chance of not projecting the bodily feeling onto any unsuspecting other.
Being reactive to a large swath of geography (cities, countries, coasts) begs questions about how to live going forward. It also offers a reconsideration of many events and epochs of my past. As one of many examples in 2010, I left the military and went to Austin, I thought I was allergic to a plant species native to Texas, but in newer light, it seems I initially resided in a water-damaged building. A large percentage of the Airbnbs I’ve been to have not been good. Relatedly, I took a weekend trip about a year ago to reconnect with a now ex. During that weekend I was not easy to be around. We were both probably directly affected. I am sure I was. Sleep-deprived, irritable, two people literally poisoned against one another by the room and its air, but also unaware and projecting their inner states onto the other.
I don’t have allergies when I’m not in a moldy environment. Not dust, not pollen, maybe not even grass to which I was allergic as a kid. Yet, I have had lots of allergies living and working in the last decade. In Washington DC, in New Zealand, and then again back in Maryland all coincident with allergies. Visits to New York occasionally gave me asthma. All these immune responses relate to the quality of the buildings I stayed in. Many buildings have had water damage and most owners are blissfully ignorant or sometimes malevolently complicit in ignoring the problem. I can recall how much better it was to sleep in various places in Raleigh than any of the places near Washington, DC.
A new house is also no guarantee of reprieve. I went to great lengths to secure a newly built flat, but the carpet and perhaps the paint is now triggering my hyper-vigilant or overtaxed immune system. Toxic molds give off not only spores but also volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and those end up sensitizing or overwhelming the same system that would detoxify similar compounds from newly installed or purchased plastics in a home or automobile.
So this is all just to say it’s been a wild and uncomfortable ride with my own health preoccupying much of my remaining energy as I wake up to what’s been happening for much of my life. I can experience and watch myself wake up with varying levels of cognitive ability and moods. Much like the character Taravangian… Sometimes he’s a genius and sometimes he is incredibly simple. While he has an amiable personality when his IQ is low, I happen to wake up both irritable and ignorant after a night of high exposure.
A very large percentage of houses I’ve stayed in over the decades are abysmal from an air quality (for me) standpoint. This is not to blame anyone (well maybe the drywall industry) but rather a caution not to assume you’re safe just because your daily experience is normal. At least 25% of the US population has the same genetic susceptibility, but even those less susceptible are likely to have some effects from a water-damaged building. For me, the effects were very very gradual. This means, even though you are probably opposed to hearing this, many of you are misattributing some kind of illness of yours or your family members to a non-primary cause. Ignorance is our default. I’m nearly always looking at health-related content and I was ill-informed for something like 20 years. Even the allergists (2x) who both confirmed a mold allergy did nothing to warn me about living in moldy buildings. They were supposed to be the experts, but I was prescribed antihistamines and waved away.
A major difficulty in identifying this kind of problem or reactive immune system is that the symptoms can vary wildly. The main symptom going back the longest for me is simply difficulty sleeping, which starts maybe all the way back to my first move east...2001. For others, it might be depression, fatigue, or an itch. Eventually, I also acquired an inability to eat alliums and then increases in urination frequency became increasingly apparent. Despite the unusual cluster, I did not put the pieces together for years. I thought each piece was unique. Only when symptoms started getting wild with nightmares, extreme anxiety, food intolerance, fatigue, hypothermia, dehydration, deep irritability, and paranoia did I start correlating the longer-lasting and more subtle symptoms.
I was also fortunate to hear a few key anecdotes just as things were hitting a fever pitch of intensity. One of the most helpful public voices in the mold space, Judy Cho, describes her experience in which mold gave her mental illness including full-blown anorexia and aspects of bipolar disorder. Another popular podcaster, Michaela Peterson, recently triangulated her early onset rheumatoid arthritis along with various mental illness episodes to mold exposure. Her case seems like proof that there are many many misdiagnoses with very significant ramifications. She had multiple joints replaced and was medically tranquilized as a child...without remediating the offending substance.
It is very easy to not eat when you are nauseated, reacting to all food, and your thyroid is dropped to the floor. Of course, the medical system is not only not helpful but anti-helpful. The number of medical doctors and especially psychiatrists who might even be aware of this potential condition is vanishingly small. I wonder how many people think they have a psychiatric or neurologic illness and they are simply given a variety of drugs and returned to their moldy house or apartment? I feel quite fortunate to have found enough experiences that match my immediate situation and symptoms and while I don’t seem to have any permanent disability nor begun to identify with any incurable condition.
Below are some nice graphics about mold illness and its potential effects.
It is commonly misdiagnosed as:
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Fibromyalgia
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD)
Somatization (example: Hypochondria)
Autoimmune Disorders
Depression and anxiety
Allergies
So this is the world I’ve been in. Because of the VOCs, I avoid time sitting down at home, but outside of the house, I am doing a lot of reading and listening as I try to map a possible path forward. I plan to wet vacuum and hot carbon clean my carpets a few more times - this helped significantly the first time and to get more heat and sun as the seasons change down here.
Almost none of the mold resources mention this but one natural way to feel better is to increase alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone (a-MSH) which we naturally get in the sun. It’s a potent anti-inflammatory. You can also buy it in a vial.
I hope this essay can be a bit of a public service announcement that can reach a few people thinking they simply have adult onset allergies, or are wrongly diagnosed with something proposed as congenital or unremediable. As of 2020 and later there are now reasonable treatment protocols that work once we can extract ourselves from mold and VOCs. If this is relevant for you or someone you care about please forward and or reach out to me and I can share more resources.
Some of the best resources on this topic:
https://www.nutritionwithjudy.com/cirs
https://www.survivingmold.com/resources-for-patients/save-vip/additional-uses-of-vip
https://www.survivingmold.com/resources-for-patients/treatment