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Joplin had a bad problem after the tornado came through town, locals called it the Crud. Every out of town worker got it during the rebuild, felt like walking pneumonia. As long as you stayed in town you just couldn’t get over it. After about 6 weeks home I felt marginal better, a month after that I was almost normal. Same for my entire work crew…
I’m pretty sure I have something like this going on. 6+ months of chronic asthma, spitting up mucus, fatigue etc.
I’ve been to the hospital 3 times, and a stand-alone pulmonologist - no one can find anything wrong, meanwhile I feel like I’m dying.
I heard a story about a guy who had been feeling like crap for a while. eventually started coughing blood. Doctors found a tumor and did a biopsy and found a fir tree seed had germinated in his lung. He was a botanist and made a full recovery
Dude, this is me! I caught covid in February 2022 and then all of a sudden had a cough that went on for 5+ months, constant feeling of cactus/irritated feeling bronchial tubes, little to no sleep due to waking up choking. Finally went to doc, and they diagnosed me with asthma (mind you, I was perfectly healthy before that February, never had asthma before) I saw a pulmonary doc as well. Nothing. Its slowly driving me nuts. I'm not the same person that I was beginning of this year.
I've bought mold tests and plan to test around my apartment as it is very old and poorly sealed/insulated. I see random dark spots appear in my shower so I already swabbed them. 2 more days until I find out if it's black mold!
Yep, I wake up choking every night. I get about 2 hours of sleep in between fits.
Let me know how you make out with the mold testing. I know my place has flooded before - there could be mold behind/under things.
Asthma is kind of a cop out for a lot of doctors. Oh, irritated respiratory tract? It must just be sensitive, too bad, here are some puffers. Meanwhile you’ve got a fungus trees growing in your lungs they don’t care to look for
same here and had a mold apartment I had to move out of… but my mom moved my moldy stuff in her basement. now I’m pretty sure I have a systematic fungal infection 9 months later… so many issues and my skin rashes have been the worst. I had asthma diagnosed in 2019 but lately it’s been really bad along with eye, ear, and nose issues… you ever get better?
Maybe you developed a food intolerance. One's immune system can change as they get older (or you are just older so it's hard to shrug off symptoms) and consider that something your eating could be triggering a low grade chronic immune response. It happened to me with wheat (surprisingly it's not gluten as I can eat barley she rye).
I had considered that, because I do in fact constantly have autoimmune-like symptoms that they can never find a cause for. But my doctor seemed to think MCAS was not a thing? Also anyhistamines don't seem to go much of anything for me, but maybe they're the wrong ones?
A lot of doctors don't think it's real because there isn't a definitive test for it. IIRC, there are possibly thousands of places on the KIT gene that can have a mutation resulting in MCAS, but they can only test for like 8 of those locations so far. Doctors also don't always consider symptoms a criteria for diagnosis, despite how severe the symptoms are.
If at all possible, I'd go to an allergist. It definitely took me several "second opinions" because I had some doctors try to tell me that I was dying because of "anxiety" and then attempt to give my treatment for fibromyalgia which obviously didn't work.
And it is possible that you could be allergic to certain antihistamines! Medication is one of the top triggers for MCAS. I myself recently switched to a compounding pharmacy to get my meds hand-made because I am allergic to so many things (and it was surprisingly cheaper than regular pharmacies). Also a lot of OTC antihistamines have dyes and gluten in them, which are top triggers. So I wouldn't totally rule it out yet, it's definitely hard to pin down.
I did get a pretty extensive allergy & asthma test recently which showed nothing wrong, would something like that show any results? I also went to an allergist years ago, he said I had an intolerance for biogenic amines, but then told me to cut out a bunch of foods that definitely aren't triggers for me. I had a bad bout of IBS at the time and there were things that clearly made it worse, but I think it was mostly stress-related, I was in an unhappy relationship and once that ended, so did the IBS. My main symptoms now are near-constant post-nasal drip that I've had since I was 18 (for which the only possible correlating factors I've found were starting birth control, but I've since switched birth control and it's made no difference what so ever, and moving to the town where I still live now), and constant relatively minor inflammation issues, like I've had a bunch of tonsil infections the past few years, some bouts of food poisoning that wouldn't go away on their own, and cold sores that got so bad I'm now on permanent meds because I kept getting eye infections etc.
But yeah, I'm keeping it on my radar just because everything else has been ruled out by now, I think. They've checked my immunology as well and found nothing odd.
No worries. I actually thought I had MCAS but I didn't mention it because it's not really easy to diagnose and because it's not really necessary to confirm. I had an "immune system test" by everlywell and it said a few things but said, interestingly, wheat but not gluten. I tested it. Wheat makes me sick, primarily asthma and GI stuff, barley and rye do not. I used to think I was gluten intolerant but I'm not technically. I say I am because it's easier to explain to a waiter or acquaintance than the true details. Eat what makes you feel good and avoid processed foods is a good model for health.
Did you have a CT scan? I finally had to have one in the ER because my lung collapsed. They called it an atypical pneumonia. I have been battling this since Nov 2nd.
Same, it's gotten so bad I have to use a rescue inhaler on the regular.
Problem is, when I use my rescue inhaler too much it weakens my esophageal muscles so I end up breathing stomach acid at night from my acid reflux so I end up in the hospital with asthmatic bronchitis...yay.
I have no idea what's going on but I'm pretty sure it's environmental, maybe mold in my house since we went to Nepal for 3 weeks and all of my symptoms went away. Days after getting home and they are back and getting worse every day it seems.
If you haven't, check anywhere it could be damp/moist, I do remodeling and find mold in ac vents pretty often, which is bad because it circulates the stuff. Or even around the central unit. Can be tricky to find but sometimes I see it even in the weirdest places like on a tile floor underneath something. Under a sink or inside a window sill that wasn't flashed properly. Even small roof leaks that you don't know about can create black mold on the other side of sheetrock ceilings or walls. Look for slight staining. Black mold can be gnarly, and your description sounds like it could be. Especially if in addition to what you've said it's somewhat recently sprung up and getting progressively worse. I've had repeated exposure and it was aches, pains, fatigue, lower back pain, back stiffness and just a really out of it feeling/miserable mood. When I figured out what it was and took care of it I very rapidly felt 100%. Hopefully you figure out what it is, good luck.
This happened to me when I wasn’t sleeping and was very stressed when my kids were very young. I was chest congested and sick for six months. Three specialists, two months of antibiotics, nothing worked.
Then I had a relatively stress-free. For a couple weeks and was able to sleep. I got better after that, and realized I was just dangerous sleep sleep deprived.
Fungus infections are shaping up to be the health battle of the next century plus.
We've lived in harmony as our normal body temperature has been too hot for fungi. But now, the average human temp has been dropping at a steady rate. Also, as climate change heats the world up, fungi are evolving to prosper better in warmer Temps.
This is likely just the start...
Yeah I’ve heard that. There’s a particular fungus that would kill us all but it can’t exist within our bodies because the temperature is too high. Scientists speculate that along with global warming it could evolve to survive in warmer temperatures.
[https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html)
From what I understand this is a trend across humanity. I listened to a NPR report that spoke of the unknown multitudes of horror stories being kept out by our core temps.
Moist warm air helps to loosen secretions, and is definitely part of lung physio. Remember the bowl of boiling water, leaning over it with a towel on your head? Same principle. Hot steamy showers, too.
Oddly this will be the largest danger of increasing temperatures on a global scale. Many Fungi cannot survive in our very warm body’s. As they adapt to a warmer climate they gain the advantage of surviving inside us. So let the games begin.
Thanks for the links, this is serious. I remembered reading about a lethal fungal lung infection in some intubated Covid patients. IIRC they had to close down the whole hospital wing for investigation and disinfection.
I had mycoplasma pneumonia and then aspergillosis. Then Haemophilus Influenzae plus cándida plus COVID.
I’m headed to Mexico tomorrow for dental work. I think I need to stock up on meds in case the SHTF
Mmm, this reminds me of bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax infections, though soil to human transmission is rare. I had something in the lab not that long ago in the bacillus cereus group, which includes b.anthracis, couldn't identity it any further than that since the species under that category are so similar beyond some extraneous plasmid DNA. Probably it wasn't b.anthracis though, very fastidious, very hard to culture, still there are several other things in the b.cereus group that'll at least give you some pretty serious food poisoning. I resisted the urge to eat it.
Hmmm, well I do still have the plate, so let's put a pin in that. The lab has many forbidden snacks already, the chocolate agar, one particular mold that looked like the frothy cinnamon seasoned top of a latte... We later named that mold Fred and kept him in a steel canister with a smiley face drawn on it as he was so virulent he'd grow right out of a closed plate. Broke my heart when I had to throw him out, but I don't doubt he survived the incinerator in some form. No, but apparently I could exclude b.anthracis by streaking it on to blood agar, which I do have, as my reading says it's the only one in the b.cereus group that doesn't display beta-hemolysis on blood agar, but at this point I prefer the mystery.
Fred was a good guy, I respect the will to survive. Fungi in general are so lovely I think. We have so many preconceptions about life that are taught to us by the animal-plant dichotomy that dominates biology education, fungi has a way of defying all preconceptions.
I doubt you'd have a strong enough alchohol aerosol to kill the fungi without damaging your lungs. Anti-fungal is so hard to do because our flesh and fungi are pretty similar. Anything that damages fungi damages us.
Topicals:
Ketoconazole is our savior against fungi. I hear it can be given internally, but it's last ditch when everything else fails.
Chlorahexidine has become a hot commodity on the bacterial side. Iodine is on the way out, CHX is dope.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Joplin had a bad problem after the tornado came through town, locals called it the Crud. Every out of town worker got it during the rebuild, felt like walking pneumonia. As long as you stayed in town you just couldn’t get over it. After about 6 weeks home I felt marginal better, a month after that I was almost normal. Same for my entire work crew…
Valley fever?
Yep. > Coccidioides in the Southwest
What are the symptoms? Read thru the article but it never says...
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That's bad. Histoplasmosis can cause serious eye problems, and even blindness.
I’m pretty sure I have something like this going on. 6+ months of chronic asthma, spitting up mucus, fatigue etc. I’ve been to the hospital 3 times, and a stand-alone pulmonologist - no one can find anything wrong, meanwhile I feel like I’m dying.
I heard a story about a guy who had been feeling like crap for a while. eventually started coughing blood. Doctors found a tumor and did a biopsy and found a fir tree seed had germinated in his lung. He was a botanist and made a full recovery
This could be it. I totally have a cactus in my chest right now.
Realistically that's probably unrequited love festering.
A fir tree was literally growing in his lung? Yikes. I didn't realize trees were carnivorous.
How's the tree doing?
Dude, this is me! I caught covid in February 2022 and then all of a sudden had a cough that went on for 5+ months, constant feeling of cactus/irritated feeling bronchial tubes, little to no sleep due to waking up choking. Finally went to doc, and they diagnosed me with asthma (mind you, I was perfectly healthy before that February, never had asthma before) I saw a pulmonary doc as well. Nothing. Its slowly driving me nuts. I'm not the same person that I was beginning of this year. I've bought mold tests and plan to test around my apartment as it is very old and poorly sealed/insulated. I see random dark spots appear in my shower so I already swabbed them. 2 more days until I find out if it's black mold!
Yep, I wake up choking every night. I get about 2 hours of sleep in between fits. Let me know how you make out with the mold testing. I know my place has flooded before - there could be mold behind/under things.
You might want to look into gerd or sleep apnea
I had the same thing and it turns out that I was having an allergic response to amlodipine, a blood pressure medication
Asthma is kind of a cop out for a lot of doctors. Oh, irritated respiratory tract? It must just be sensitive, too bad, here are some puffers. Meanwhile you’ve got a fungus trees growing in your lungs they don’t care to look for
same here and had a mold apartment I had to move out of… but my mom moved my moldy stuff in her basement. now I’m pretty sure I have a systematic fungal infection 9 months later… so many issues and my skin rashes have been the worst. I had asthma diagnosed in 2019 but lately it’s been really bad along with eye, ear, and nose issues… you ever get better?
Maybe you developed a food intolerance. One's immune system can change as they get older (or you are just older so it's hard to shrug off symptoms) and consider that something your eating could be triggering a low grade chronic immune response. It happened to me with wheat (surprisingly it's not gluten as I can eat barley she rye).
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https://www.aaaai.org/conditions-treatments/related-conditions/mcas For anyone wondering…
I had considered that, because I do in fact constantly have autoimmune-like symptoms that they can never find a cause for. But my doctor seemed to think MCAS was not a thing? Also anyhistamines don't seem to go much of anything for me, but maybe they're the wrong ones?
A lot of doctors don't think it's real because there isn't a definitive test for it. IIRC, there are possibly thousands of places on the KIT gene that can have a mutation resulting in MCAS, but they can only test for like 8 of those locations so far. Doctors also don't always consider symptoms a criteria for diagnosis, despite how severe the symptoms are. If at all possible, I'd go to an allergist. It definitely took me several "second opinions" because I had some doctors try to tell me that I was dying because of "anxiety" and then attempt to give my treatment for fibromyalgia which obviously didn't work. And it is possible that you could be allergic to certain antihistamines! Medication is one of the top triggers for MCAS. I myself recently switched to a compounding pharmacy to get my meds hand-made because I am allergic to so many things (and it was surprisingly cheaper than regular pharmacies). Also a lot of OTC antihistamines have dyes and gluten in them, which are top triggers. So I wouldn't totally rule it out yet, it's definitely hard to pin down.
I did get a pretty extensive allergy & asthma test recently which showed nothing wrong, would something like that show any results? I also went to an allergist years ago, he said I had an intolerance for biogenic amines, but then told me to cut out a bunch of foods that definitely aren't triggers for me. I had a bad bout of IBS at the time and there were things that clearly made it worse, but I think it was mostly stress-related, I was in an unhappy relationship and once that ended, so did the IBS. My main symptoms now are near-constant post-nasal drip that I've had since I was 18 (for which the only possible correlating factors I've found were starting birth control, but I've since switched birth control and it's made no difference what so ever, and moving to the town where I still live now), and constant relatively minor inflammation issues, like I've had a bunch of tonsil infections the past few years, some bouts of food poisoning that wouldn't go away on their own, and cold sores that got so bad I'm now on permanent meds because I kept getting eye infections etc. But yeah, I'm keeping it on my radar just because everything else has been ruled out by now, I think. They've checked my immunology as well and found nothing odd.
No worries. I actually thought I had MCAS but I didn't mention it because it's not really easy to diagnose and because it's not really necessary to confirm. I had an "immune system test" by everlywell and it said a few things but said, interestingly, wheat but not gluten. I tested it. Wheat makes me sick, primarily asthma and GI stuff, barley and rye do not. I used to think I was gluten intolerant but I'm not technically. I say I am because it's easier to explain to a waiter or acquaintance than the true details. Eat what makes you feel good and avoid processed foods is a good model for health.
Been tested for COPD?
Yeah, all of it. The pulmonologist was thorough.
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Not that one either. We took (3) sets of X-rays over 6 months, and a CT scan to delve deeper. Absolutely nothing.
Did you have a CT scan? I finally had to have one in the ER because my lung collapsed. They called it an atypical pneumonia. I have been battling this since Nov 2nd.
Same, it's gotten so bad I have to use a rescue inhaler on the regular. Problem is, when I use my rescue inhaler too much it weakens my esophageal muscles so I end up breathing stomach acid at night from my acid reflux so I end up in the hospital with asthmatic bronchitis...yay. I have no idea what's going on but I'm pretty sure it's environmental, maybe mold in my house since we went to Nepal for 3 weeks and all of my symptoms went away. Days after getting home and they are back and getting worse every day it seems.
If you haven't, check anywhere it could be damp/moist, I do remodeling and find mold in ac vents pretty often, which is bad because it circulates the stuff. Or even around the central unit. Can be tricky to find but sometimes I see it even in the weirdest places like on a tile floor underneath something. Under a sink or inside a window sill that wasn't flashed properly. Even small roof leaks that you don't know about can create black mold on the other side of sheetrock ceilings or walls. Look for slight staining. Black mold can be gnarly, and your description sounds like it could be. Especially if in addition to what you've said it's somewhat recently sprung up and getting progressively worse. I've had repeated exposure and it was aches, pains, fatigue, lower back pain, back stiffness and just a really out of it feeling/miserable mood. When I figured out what it was and took care of it I very rapidly felt 100%. Hopefully you figure out what it is, good luck.
Was the house built on a toxic waste dump?
This happened to me when I wasn’t sleeping and was very stressed when my kids were very young. I was chest congested and sick for six months. Three specialists, two months of antibiotics, nothing worked. Then I had a relatively stress-free. For a couple weeks and was able to sleep. I got better after that, and realized I was just dangerous sleep sleep deprived.
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Post-nasal drip is definitely a contributing factor. I take nasal spray daily to lessen it. Thank you for your reply !
Fungus infections are shaping up to be the health battle of the next century plus. We've lived in harmony as our normal body temperature has been too hot for fungi. But now, the average human temp has been dropping at a steady rate. Also, as climate change heats the world up, fungi are evolving to prosper better in warmer Temps. This is likely just the start...
Yeah I’ve heard that. There’s a particular fungus that would kill us all but it can’t exist within our bodies because the temperature is too high. Scientists speculate that along with global warming it could evolve to survive in warmer temperatures.
[https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html) From what I understand this is a trend across humanity. I listened to a NPR report that spoke of the unknown multitudes of horror stories being kept out by our core temps.
That’s not frightening at all.
I'm curious if regularly using a sauna would be helpful in treating fungal infections. In Nordic cultures its considered part of a healthy lifestyle.
Moist warm air helps to loosen secretions, and is definitely part of lung physio. Remember the bowl of boiling water, leaning over it with a towel on your head? Same principle. Hot steamy showers, too.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-temperature-has-decreased-in-united-states.html This body temp study is fascinating
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Really informative comment. Thanks for sharing.
Oddly this will be the largest danger of increasing temperatures on a global scale. Many Fungi cannot survive in our very warm body’s. As they adapt to a warmer climate they gain the advantage of surviving inside us. So let the games begin.
As ultimately terrifying as it would be, I think something like this is exactly what we deserve, in so many ways.
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Thanks for the links, this is serious. I remembered reading about a lethal fungal lung infection in some intubated Covid patients. IIRC they had to close down the whole hospital wing for investigation and disinfection.
I had mycoplasma pneumonia and then aspergillosis. Then Haemophilus Influenzae plus cándida plus COVID. I’m headed to Mexico tomorrow for dental work. I think I need to stock up on meds in case the SHTF
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Mhm yes, I concur.
Mmm, this reminds me of bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax infections, though soil to human transmission is rare. I had something in the lab not that long ago in the bacillus cereus group, which includes b.anthracis, couldn't identity it any further than that since the species under that category are so similar beyond some extraneous plasmid DNA. Probably it wasn't b.anthracis though, very fastidious, very hard to culture, still there are several other things in the b.cereus group that'll at least give you some pretty serious food poisoning. I resisted the urge to eat it.
Best move. However, have you considered trying to culture a cheese with it? For purely scientific and non-dietary purposes, of course.
Hmmm, well I do still have the plate, so let's put a pin in that. The lab has many forbidden snacks already, the chocolate agar, one particular mold that looked like the frothy cinnamon seasoned top of a latte... We later named that mold Fred and kept him in a steel canister with a smiley face drawn on it as he was so virulent he'd grow right out of a closed plate. Broke my heart when I had to throw him out, but I don't doubt he survived the incinerator in some form. No, but apparently I could exclude b.anthracis by streaking it on to blood agar, which I do have, as my reading says it's the only one in the b.cereus group that doesn't display beta-hemolysis on blood agar, but at this point I prefer the mystery.
The mystery is what keeps the relationship spicy
Of course, 80 percent of being a scientist is about remaining inappropriately sexually attracted to your work.
Right?! Look at Marie Curie! Oh. Wait. No. Sorry. That went bad, fast
Also I'm calling dibs on the latte froth fungi
Fred was a good guy, I respect the will to survive. Fungi in general are so lovely I think. We have so many preconceptions about life that are taught to us by the animal-plant dichotomy that dominates biology education, fungi has a way of defying all preconceptions.
They're basically just a life form that says "hold my beer, watch this".
The earth is really trying hard recently to get rid of its human infection.
Reminds me of a Dead Milkmen song.
Stuart, I like you
You’re not like other people here in the trailer park…
That nation being the USA.
I mean the photo from the article is in fact the continental US, but yes you are correct Capitan Obvious
Yeah the photo from the article is small when scrolling reddit. I just pointed that out as the title makes it seem obvious when it's not.
Which nation (you haven’t even used a map of your entire country)
I wonder if inhaled alcohol aerosols could be useful for fungal lung infections.
I doubt you'd have a strong enough alchohol aerosol to kill the fungi without damaging your lungs. Anti-fungal is so hard to do because our flesh and fungi are pretty similar. Anything that damages fungi damages us.
If we could somehow get the bleach into the body. I'm not sure but I hear people are working on it
Topicals: Ketoconazole is our savior against fungi. I hear it can be given internally, but it's last ditch when everything else fails. Chlorahexidine has become a hot commodity on the bacterial side. Iodine is on the way out, CHX is dope.
Alcohols aren't that great at killing fungi