What Brain Disorders Are Caused By Mold Toxicity?

Every neurodegenerative disease, from autism and multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s and ALS, has studies that reveal evidence of fungi in the brain.

Mold toxins destroy the myelin sheath and axons through lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress. As a result, causing neurodegeneration, kills olfactory neurons, and damages the membranes and mitochondrial of cells.

In a healthy brain, the production of neurotransmitters that affect mood are self-regulated, naturally avoiding an imbalance that could lead to depression.

Paranoia can often be caused by high levels of toxic molds, such as the trichothecene black mold toxin or the Ocratoxin-producing Aspergilus Mold.

Irritability and Rage

Mold toxic patients often feel out of control in their own brain, describing the feeling by saying that it feels as if their brain is “hot wired.”

Neurological symptoms of mold eposure

A Parkinson’s disease diagnosis often results in a feeling of hopelessness.

Short-term Memory Loss

Do you ever walk into a room and think, “What did I come in here for?” Mold toxicity may be the reason.

Bipolar & Schizophrenic Tendencies

Glutamate is an amino acid found throughout every part of the body. In the nervous system, however, glutamate is used as a neurotransmitter.

How Mold Impacts Your Brain

  1. Cognitive Decline: Mold toxicity can lead to cognitive impairment, causing difficulties with memory, attention, and problem-solving skills. It may feel like a mental fog has settled upon the brain, hindering everyday functioning.
  2. Mood Disorders: Mold exposure has been linked to mood disturbances such as depression, anxiety, and irritability. The toxic effects of mold can disrupt neurotransmitter balance, affecting emotional well-being.
  3. Neuroinflammation: Mold toxicity triggers an inflammatory response in the brain, leading to chronic neuroinflammation. This sustained inflammation can contribute to the development of various neurological disorders.
  4. Headaches and Migraines: Mold exposure can provoke severe headaches and migraines, often debilitating in nature. These recurrent headaches may persist as long as the individual remains in a mold-contaminated environment.
  5. Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Prolonged exposure to mold toxins, especially during critical developmental stages, may increase the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in children. Conditions such as autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been associated with mold exposure.
  6. Sleep Disturbances: Mold toxicity can disrupt the sleep-wake cycle, leading to insomnia or fragmented sleep patterns. Poor sleep quality can exacerbate cognitive and mood-related symptoms.
  7. Neurological Autoimmune Disorders: Mold toxins can trigger or exacerbate autoimmune responses in the nervous system, resulting in conditions like multiple sclerosis (MS) and Guillain-Barré syndrome. The immune system mistakenly attacks the nervous tissue, leading to neurological dysfunction.
  8. Seizure Disorders: Mold exposure has been implicated in the development of seizures, even in individuals without a prior history. The toxic effects of mold on the brain's electrical activity can increase seizure susceptibility.
  9. Balance and Coordination Issues: Mold toxicity may disrupt the brain's ability to regulate balance and coordination, leading to instability, dizziness, and difficulties with motor control.
  10. Neurocognitive Disorders: Prolonged exposure to mold toxins can contribute to the development of neurocognitive disorders, such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and even Alzheimer's disease. Mold-related neurocognitive disorders often manifest as progressive memory loss and cognitive decline.

How Does Mold Toxicity Impact The Brain?

You may be familiar with mildew and black mold, but have you truly grasped the extent of mold's influence on your well-being?

Mold isn't just a pesky intruder; it harbors a potent toxin that permeates the air, releasing toxic gas and spores.

Mold toxicity is a serious health concern that is increasingly affecting individuals and families worldwide. Exposure to toxic mold spores can lead to various health problems, including countless brain disorders and mental health issues.

As these insidious toxins infiltrate your body through skin or inhalation, they disrupt the harmony of numerous organs, including your brain.

People afflicted with toxic mold syndrome often have numerous systemic symptoms, including cognitive-related problems such as:

  • Headaches
  • Forgetfulness
  • Impaired memory
  • Inability to recall words
  • Vertigo and dizziness
  • Poor concentration and more.

Mycotoxins can impact mental health as well, contributing to anxiety, depression, mood swings, or behavioral changes that compound other neurological symptoms.

Adipose Tissue & Mycotoxins - A Fatal Attraction

Mold toxins are lipophilic, fatty in molecular structure, and fat-soluble. The cell membrane of every cell in our body consists of a lipophilic structure. Therefore, these lipophilic toxins can travel uninhibited throughout the body.

These fatty toxins move throughout our bloodstream, easily cross and destroy our blood-brain barrier, and then accumulate in our fattiest tissue, our neurological system; thus, the term Neurotoxicity.

Our fattiest organ is our Brain which consists of 60 percent fatty content. The fattiest tissue in our body is the myelin sheath on the Brain Neurons and peripheral nerves. It consists of 80 percent fatty content, 25 percent of which is cholesterol; another reason cholesterol levels below 180 are detrimental to our Brain and peripheral nervous system!

When lipophilic mold toxins saturate the myelin sheath, they displace healthy fatty acids like DHA and EPA from fatty acid chains, causing fatty acid oxidation and lipid peroxidation.

Subsequent inflammation of the myelin sheath causes “burning” neuropathic pain. Females in particular, get burning pain in their feet and legs.

Inflammation of the myelin sheath disrupts the electromagnetic field surrounding neurons which causes a subsequent reduction of the electrical signal.

How Does Sponaugle Wellness treat mold-related brain disorders?

At Sponaugle Wellness Institute, we have successfully treated thousands of patients who suffered from undiagnosed mood disorders because psychiatrists failed to diagnose the underlying cause of their psychological symptoms. For this reason, they did not respond to traditional psychiatric treatment.

Dr. Rick Sponaugle has treated thousands of patients who came to him seeking help with addiction, anxiety, and mental illness, only to find the root cause of their brain disorder and mental health issues was exposure to toxic black mold and environmental toxins.

Historically, Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have assumed that most mood disorders are derived from the patient’s inability to cope with life’s stressors.

However, our clinical research at Sponaugle Wellness Institute has proven that the majority of patients struggling with Depression, Anxiety, and other mood disorders are unable to overcome their psychological symptomatology because the medical community has failed to diagnose the ever-increasing imbalance of brain chemistry in Americans.

Dr. Sponaugle has performed extensive clinical research regarding the Gut-Brain connection. He has written chapters for naturopathic physicians in which he elucidated the specific biochemical mechanisms by which Intestinal Overgrowth of Candida and pathogenic bacteria, such as Klebsiella, Proteus, and enterobacteria, cause mood-disrupting neurochemical imbalances.

Using phospholipid therapy with IV phosphatidylcholine, IV alpha lipoic acid, and IV glutathione, as well as colon hydrotherapy, Dr. Sponaugle has helped thousands of patients release the lipophilic toxins from their cellular membranes and open their detox pathways to eliminate these harmful lipophilic toxins.

We also focus on neuroplasticity, stress reduction, quality sleep, and reducing the toxic load to help the liver, along with other efforts that consider a whole-system approach to helping you and your brain heal from the effects of mold exposure.

 

Mold Toxicity and Its Connection to Addiction, Depression, Anxiety, and Insomnia

Dr. Sponaugle has found that many patients develop alcoholism, OxyContin addiction, or Xanax addiction while attempting to self-medicate the neurological disorders caused by mold toxicity disrupting the brain chemistry of the brain and the gut microbiome.

Patients with mold toxicity often experience severe depression, anxiety, and insomnia, leading them to seek relief through drugs and alcohol.

Through his integrative approach to treatment, Dr. Sponaugle has helped patients overcome their addictions and mental health issues by addressing the root cause of their problems: mold toxicity.

Mold Toxicity Causing Addiction, Leading to Depression, Anxiety, and Insomnia

At Sponaugle Wellness, Dr. Rick Sponaugle is proving that many patients develop alcoholism, OxyContin addiction, or Xanax addiction while attempting to self-medicate the following disorders caused by mold toxicity.

Depression

Dr. Sponaugle was recently informed by a top mold toxicity testing and diagnostic lab in Dallas that he is the top mold toxicity doctor in North America based on the results they see before and after treatment in patient samples.

The lab director, Dr. Hooper, was amazed that Dr. Sponaugle could diagnose mold toxicity with a 98 percent accuracy when other physicians using their testing averaged only 10 percent accuracy.

Dr. Sponaugle explained that he had correlated the brain scans of mold-toxic patients with their brain chemistry patterns and mold toxin levels.

Similar patterns occur in patients suffering Benzene toxicity from the Gulf Oil Spill, which is less common than mold toxicity.

Dr. Sponaugle also explained that he had personally suffered mold toxicity, Trichothecene toxicity, which has enhanced his ability to recognize the mold toxicity patient.

Dr. Sponaugle further explained that he has been correlating brain neurotransmitter profiles with other indirect biomarkers of mold toxicity for years.

Among these biomarkers – are elevated immune markers [C3 A and C4 A ] and severe central hormonal suppression [pituitary hormones], including the following; Growth Hormone, MSH, ADH, TSH, ACTH, FSH, and LH.

Dr. Sponaugle says that many patients suffering from opiate and Xanax addiction use drugs like Oxycontin and Xanax to “calm their anxious brains.”

These patients usually test positive for HLA-DRBQ genetics, which disallows the efficient removal of mold toxins from their bodies and brain.

Supposedly only 24 percent of Americans have HLA-DRBQ genetics. However, Dr. Sponaugle diagnoses this genetic disorder in 80 percent of his patients.

This genetic aberration is commonly found in patients of Irish, English, Scandinavian, German, and essentially northern European descent.

The immune system of patients with HLA-DRBQ genetics does not “tag” fatty toxins as abnormal or “foreign” to the body. Hence, these patients do not efficiently remove mold toxins from their brains and body.

Patients with HLA-DRBQ genetics remove mold and other fatty toxins 468 percent less efficiently than others.

While the symptoms of mold toxicity are many, Dr. Sponaugle says specific symptoms are the driving force causation of drug addiction and or alcoholism. Initially, patients notice insomnia; then, they develop anxiety and insomnia.

As the brain accumulates higher levels of the mold toxins, Glutamate and PEA, two powerful electrifying brain chemicals, become elevated, producing excessive electrical activity in the brain, and worst-case scenarios, develop bipolar symptoms.

Patients self-medicate their brain’s upregulated “electrical voltage” with calming drugs like alcohol, Oxycontin-like medication, and benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Klonopin.

Dr. Sponaugle has treated many mold-toxic patients whose glutamate levels were so high that they exhibited bipolar symptoms and were sadly diagnosed bipolar by unknowing psychiatrists before coming to Dr. Sponaugle’s clinic.

The University of South Florida psychiatrists misdiagnosed two young male patients as schizophrenic. The university psychiatrists were, of course, naive regarding mold toxicity.

Fortunately, Dr. Steven Stahl of Scripts University in San Diego wrote in his book on Bipolar and Schizophrenia about the possibility of excessive glutamate, not just excessive dopamine, being the cause of these disorders.

While Dr. Stahl did not make the connection with excessive accumulation of mold toxins as the cause of excessive glutamate production, it is a step in the right direction.

Dr. Sponaugle has found excessive glutamate levels in 9 of 10 patients previously diagnosed with bipolar. A condition felt by most to be derived from excessive dopamine production. Hence, the majority of the medications for Bipolar are dopamine blockers.

Dr. Sponaugle recently treated a paranoid 22-year-old male who the University of Miami Psychiatrists had misdiagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic.

When Michael failed to improve after six psychiatric admissions to the University of Miami Psych ward, his parents brought him to Florida Detox for Dr. Sponaugle’s evaluation.

Michael’s history consisted of living in a mold-infested apartment on Miami Beach for six months before he began to develop paranoia. He tested positive for high levels of the Trichothecene Black Mold toxin and Ochratoxin produced by Aspergillus Mold. Michael quickly responded to Dr. Sponaugle’s intravenous toxin removal program, his paranoia diminished after just one week, and after three weeks of treatment, his depression and anxiety were gone.*

Because mold toxins shut down hormonal production in the brain’s pituitary gland, patients suffer severe depression and chronic fatigue. Pure adrenaline [epinephrine] can not activate its receptors in the brain and body without cortisol; cortisol deficiency is common in mold-toxic patients. Dopamine can not activate the D2 dopamine receptor [happy receptor] in the brain’s pleasure center without adequate testosterone, and thyroid hormone, both of these hormones are deficient in mold-toxic patients.

Patients who suffer from mold toxicity utilize opiate pain pills for the opiate-induced dopamine hit in their dopamine-deprived pleasure center. This temporarily treats their depression. They also benefit from the relaxing “calcium channel blockade” effect of opiate pain pills, which brings quiescence to their “over-electrified” brain.

While mold-toxic patients experience severe depression and fatigue, they feel like their brain is “hot-wired” or plugged into an electrical outlet.

Over time, as the mold toxicity worsens, patients begin to feel, from a physical perspective, as though they have a 25-pound cement block attached to each leg.

Their body feels weak, lethargic, and in slow motion, yet, their brain is over-electrified, anxious, irritable, and often exhibit rage.

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