Tinnitus from Toxic Mold Exposure

From 2017 through 2019 I lived in a house that had mold in it. I was unaware... The mold growth increased significantly through 2018-2019 and along with that all of my symptoms:

Pain all over my body
Tinnitus
Fullness of the ears
Dizziness
And more ...

The tinnitus is four different frequencies. A primary one at around 300 Hz. Secondary ones at progressively higher frequencies. It is at a moderate loudness such that even with hearing aids (I have genetic hearing loss) I can still hear the tinnitus.

How I know that it was due to mold exposure is because for the fullness of the ears, I visited the ENT. They examined me and said they could not find anything wrong. This is when it was plugged all the time and I could hear myself quite loudly -- as if I was under water. That ENT recommended PatulEND. I bought it and waited for a week while it arrived. It arrived and I did the drops up my nose to go up the canal to the ears. It burns like hell.

What came out was black, grey, brown and all kinds of horrible colors and tastes. But finally my ears were now less full than usual. The tinnitus remained but it is clear that there was crap in my ears from the mold. Probably blown up there when I was clearing my nose.

The tinnitus started in force around March and increased a bit in loudness over time. It decreased for a bit when I did HBOT but it is continuing all the time day and night now.

The only thing that effectively masks the sounds is playing one particular meditation song on the mindfulness app. The frequencies are just right and it just goes away while it plays. Great for getting me to fall asleep...

 

How did you reach this diagnosis?

 

I was in a mold house for more than two years and I have a number of other symptoms. When I used PatulEND to clear out the junk from my ears, mold basically came out.

 

Thanks. I just read that thread. It just says that all kinds of stuff came out of your ear, but that doesn't mean it's mold. It's very common to have gooey stuff of all kinds of colors and textures be in our heads (middle ears, sinuses, etc). Have you had a lab analyze this substance to determine whether it was mold? That would be a much stronger clue.

 

I know people like you are usually just beyond skeptical and don't believe when people say mold. On the other hand, if I were to say "BLEACH" you'd be nodding your head in agreement.

Besides which -- I had the house tested for mold (it was there) and mold got into my body and caused all kinds of other symptoms such that I had mold in my blood and urine.

But sure...just continue to disbelieve me and live in your fantasy world where mold doesn't hurt people.

 

Dude back off of Greg he’s just giving you his opinion and helping you along to a valid diagnosis.

 

The problem with mold is no one wants to believe that it can harm people. Not the doctors. Not the lawyers. No one. But there are millions of people living with damage from mycotoxins. I am one of them and I am damn tired of people just automatically going "oh no, it has to be something else".

I didn't have ANY of these problems before living in that house and finding the mold in the house, in my blood and in my piss and in my ears.

 

Systemic stem cells could certainly help your body. However, as the Dallas clinic points out, they are harvested from your own tissue. Therefore, autologous therapy tainted by preexisting mold exposure may just get more of it into your blood. IDK, I am not an expert in mold exposure. I would opt for stem cells not extracted from your own body.

 

You have hearing loss from other causes? That's your likely cause of tinnitus right there. Although I suspect that tinnitus can be "activated" in people with hearing loss. Not everyone with hearing loss gets tinnitus and the reason for that is not understood yet. Did black mold allergy "activate" your tinntus? Maybe. Did the mold cause ETD that gave you tinntus? Maybe. Is black mold ototoxic? If I remember correctly some strains are.

Please let us know if you find any hard evidence of mold causing tinnitus. I know how frustrating it is to suspect something concerning your health, and doctors simply think you're a self-diagnosing nutcase. I lived in a moldy apartment for about a year before it was discovered. I developed tinnitus during that time, but in my case I think headphone use is a more likely culprit. I have suspected mold as well though since I have unexplained joint pain as well. My girlfriend who lived in the apartment with me has none of these symptoms. Did you live alone in the moldy house? Do you have other allergies?

I don't think anyone here denies that mold causes health problems, but in general I think people are skeptical when someone claims that something very uncommon caused their tinnitus, especially when there is a much more likely cause (your hearing loss). When people get tinnitus they usually don't know what caused it, and sometimes people draw novel and most likely incorrect conclusions about what caused it. I'm not saying this is what you're doing, but I think this is the reason you may run into some skepticism on this site. Nobody actually knows much about tinnitus, or mold for that matter... The very dangerous strains of black mold are rare, so most people think "black mold? makes my eyes itch for a few days but who cares, what's the big deal?"

Mold is horrible... Even though they ripped out everything in the apartment and built it up again, all my belongings have mold spores all over them. I'm not in a position where I can throw away all my stuff, nor move.

 

Mold can for sure be nasty business. So sorry this happened to you. All you can control is what goes on going forward. Are you out of that toxic environment now? I know mold is exceedingly hard to get out of buildings.

 

A mold allergy produces mast cells release of excessive amounts of histamine which produce the physical symptoms. One needs to have swelling of the nasal lining and sinuses producing cold-like symptoms of an allergic rhinitis – stuffiness, sneezing and increased production of phlegm. But - there are other conditions and diseases that can cause the same symptoms. So what is needed other than several methods of testing is to find locked associated other symptom(s).

When it come to tinnitus which is complex, as it can associate to so many things, certain locked and sealed conditions must be discovered - physical injury or something toxic, which may include something placed into mouth such as a medication, too much of a certain vitamin and sometimes lack of is often cause of tinnitus.

Pulsating Tinnitus is almost always related to blood flow, but what is causing the thumping and/or humming sometimes can be discovered by blood and radiological tests, but still again what is the underlying nature for cause. Often it's a chain of events - one problem causing another. With tinnitus, there's over 300,000 possibilities of chain of events. One particular problem may involve many event chains. Regardless of cause, hypertension often sets in, so now three dimensional chest is being played. For pulsating tinnitus, if vision is affected then there's a smaller list of cause. This would be extensive vitamin A, depleted vitamin D, carotid artery blockage, that be noted by ultrasound, ECHO for heart problems and a ultrasound for abdominal aortic. To know which condition caused the other is take blood pressure to see if hypertension exist. Many die from stroke and heart disease, but aortic death among men is listed as 8th. 60% percent of those with combinations of these conditions have thumping and humming sound. Almost all will have back and neck pain.

There are over 300,000 crossroads of conditions with tinnitus. One example - teeth hurting has 190 possibilities. Mold exposure can cause pulsating tinnitus and can cause 70 other major conditions (placed mold tinnitus into internet search).

The problem with radiological and blood testing is false positives that may show or the radiologist is out to lunch.. A MRA showed that I had a level 5 abdominal aortic aneurysm. Another MRA showed a 3. Ultrasound - the most reliable method, showed 2.2 - which is pre abdominal aortic, so surgery is not needed. My brain scans are remarkable, but I have heart and blood pressure issues. This caused carotid blockage, but <50, not enough to cause thumping and/or humming. I had vitamin A tested and I was toxic - (was eating lots of water melom) and combined with that, one hypertense moment with twisting neck caused a pre abdominal aortic and loss of vision in one eye, which has 50% recovered from stopping most use of vitamin A. Needed med control use for hypertension - The only safe med treatment for this is Clonazepam. Blood thinners, heart meds, steroids or anti platelets would help with some of my PT related problems, but any one would cause great harm to other PT associated problems.

@Jefferson Nunn The number one cause of tinnitus just north of my area in Northern California - is toxic mold from toxic home building products. Leakage thru the outside walls of 3000 new built homes into interior walls.

 

As an update...I have more details now about this situation. For several years I lived in that "mold house". I have gone to see every doctor possible concerning my condition. Here's what I have:

Virtually every aspect of my health is in reasonable shape. I don't have cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney problems, spleen problems or anything wrong really.

I can prove that I was in a room with mold.

I can prove that the mold was in my body. It was in my blood stream and I was peeing it out.

March of 2018 I woke up with a migraine at like 1am. I went to the ER and they did a CAT scan of my head. They gave me migraine medicine which sort of worked and finally after 18 hours the headache went away.

Since 2018, my pain was progressively worse. Throughout all of 2019, I was in constant pain seeing all those doctors. It was completely frustrating being told that I was crazy or whatever. Not to mention the constant multi-frequency tinnitus and balance issues.

Even the first neurologist dismissed my claims even though he had ordered an MRI in early fall of 2019. He didn't even provide a copy of the MRI results. I went to him 5 times in pain and he dismissed it every time.

A second neurologist (IN THE SAME DAMN OFFICE) finally provided me a copy of the MRI results in January of this year About 95% of the page is "there is nothing wrong" but in the fine print, located near the very end:

>>> 3mm hyperintense focus in the left thalamus on T2-weighted and FLAIR images. Findings may reflect a tiny, chronic lacunar infarct.

In plain English, I had a small stroke in my thalamus. This explains my pain and tinnitus. Here's why.

The thalamus is sort of like a network switch. It routes stuff to where it needs to go. Fry it and all kinds of crap is going to go really haywire. Oddly, one of the frequencies that it operates at, I can hear as a "beep" frequency. 5 hertz. I can count it between all the sounds. Thalamocortial dysrhythmia includes tinnitus, pain and balance issues.

So...mold poisons got into my body and killed a part of my brain. This caused my tinnitus, pain and balance issues. That is exactly what happened. There are no other logical conclusions considering the evidence.

At least now, I have something to talk to my neurologist about. I will keep you all posted.

 

That is extremely interesting. I wonder if that is partly why I got tinnitus. What did the mold look like?

 

Wow this looks bad man, I also had mold in my window which my bed is just under. I recently got tinnitus and it might be one of the reasons, I cleared the mold but still have the tinnitus.

Do you know any way that we can detox our body from mold?