How mold in our water almost led to an adenoid removal

One day out of nowhere my youngest daughter, who was only a couple months old at the time, started making this extremely weird nose while she was breathing. It would get worse while she was laying down, and a bit better when you’d pick her up or sit her up on something and would come and go. It almost sounded like she was snoring, or as if something was swollen in the back of her throat making it hard for her to breathe. I began doing some digging. After reading quite a few different things, something was telling me it was her adenoids.

I had never even really heard of adenoids before going through this with her. We addressed it with our chiropractor and pediatrician and their answers were so different, which I find so interesting. They both agreed that her breathing did sound like swollen adenoids. All that our pediatrician told me was that if it continues to bother her, tonsil and adenoid removals are very common and we could look into that. When I brought it up to our chiropractor, she said that swollen adenoids can be present due to food intolerance or mold exposure, causing inflammation.

We had already taken out some of the inflammatory foods, and I didn’t want to take out more foods than necessary. My chiropractor had mentioned in passing that they had just replaced their water filter, and it was a bit overdue but she had found some mold growth on it. It dawned on me that we were overdue for changing our water filter as well. We ordered the replacement parts for our filter and had it changed out within the next few weeks. While we were replacing the parts we did find mold. While these parts weren’t directly touching the water, I was interested to see if any mold was still making its way into what we were drinking. It seemed way out there to me— fix a water filter, and her adenoids would become less swollen? I kid you not, I started drinking from our new filter and her difficulty breathing and inflammation in her adenoids went away. I could not believe it. I started paying attention to the different places mold could show up. I could see a clear correlation between mold and her adenoids swelling. At one point, I had some mold growth in my water bottle I used every day, and even though it was such a small amount, I noticed a correlation between the exposure to it and the inflammation it caused her.

We have become much more familiar with mold and the role it can play in chronic illnesses. We have recently done an ERMI mold test on our home, and I will be writing a blog post about things you can do in your home if you suspect mold.

So, all of this to say, if your pediatrician tells you your little one needs an adenoidectomy, check your water bottles and water filter for mold!!