A person describes growing up in a moldy basement in the 1970s-80s and connects decades of health problems to mold exposure: childhood asthma, early arthritis, ODD and OCD diagnoses, 15 years of chronic strep infections, severe weight gain by 23, and low testosterone by 26.
What happened and what kind of got you on the trail of mold toxicity? I grew up in a basement that had been flooded, that had toxic mold. And I didn't know it, and no one knew about that in the 70s and 80s. And I had childhood asthma, arthritis, diagnosed when I was 14, odd, oppositional defiant disorder and OCD, Asperger's syndrome, rashes, 15 years of antibiotics because of chronic strep throat, which is a symptom of toxic mold. Weird nightmares and dreams, all kinds of behavioral things, brain things, immune things, autoimmune stuff. By the time I was 23, I hit 300 pounds. I was 26. I was diagnosed as having lower testosterone than my mother, and mold is a major part of that reason. I was so fat and had those giant man boobs, you know, it was very biologically disruptive, and it took me a long, long time to figure out what's going on.
