Blood Blisters and Pink Mold

Some weeks ago, after being on the Vega diet for nearly a year, I decided to try again to add new foods to the list of those I could eat. I had tried and added Brussels sprouts, but nothing else. I had tried other foods and failed to find safe ones.

Truth be told, I had tried other foods often when dining out with family or friends, sharing holiday dinners, or indulging in treats. I had formed and given up many notions of what I couldn’t eat, such as gluten, as most notions did not bear out when I ate dinner at special occasion restaurants where the food was fresh, high-quality, and impeccably prepared. I could even eat potatoes at such places, even though they had always been a problem—provided they showed no signs of blight.

After sticking to the Vega diet strictly for a few weeks, I decided to buy a bag of root chips from a different organic food source. The bag contained beet chips that had been baked without additives. I knew that I could eat beets and wanted to avoid oils. The chips seemed like a good bet.

At lunch a few days later, I grabbed a handful of chips and began to eat them with gusto. After the third chip, my mouth was hurting. This was not unusual for me, so I had another. After the fourth chip, my mouth began to bleed. I went to look in a mirror and saw several blood blisters on my tongue and palate. As I rinsed my mouth, they burst. They bled, and they kept bleeding. I had no other symptoms, not then and not later.

I had had blood blisters before and thought they were part of my chronic fatigue syndrome. Clearly, they were not. Something in the chips caused them. I wondered what it was. A week on, while absently biting into an old pear from the same food source, I felt the same pain and found another blood blister. I couldn’t imagine what a fresh pear and baked chips would have in common until I took the pear to better light. In the remaining flesh, at the edge of the bite, was a pinkish spot. The pear was moldy.

I recalled a story from medical school to the effect that the white mold that grew on our stale, refrigerated bread was penicillium, which produced the toxin penicillin. This toxin attacked bacterial cell membranes, but had no effect on human ones. It was thus perfect for treating human infections. Doctors could use it to cure diseases like pneumonia, to save lives, and to change the practice of medicine forever.

The mold I had just eaten was not like penicillium; it produced a toxin that damaged human cells. A helpful article on the internet pinpointed the pink mold as fusarium. When fusarium grows naturally on foods, it produces a variety of toxins some of which may use to do intentional harm. Fusarium can cause serious infections in human beings and can produce mycotoxins that  cause a variety of symptoms.

To avoid such molds and their toxins, buy fresh organic foods from a fastidious and responsible grocer or farmer. Examine the foods carefully before you buy them. Report any that you suspect may be blighted or moldy. Take those that you choose  home, preserve them well, eat them while  fresh, and prepare them with care. And clean your fridge regularly with mild soap and water.

If you always buy the cheapest foods and can afford better, shop differently. If you find any blight or mold on a food, don’t eat it. If you have the habit of using up every scrap of food and “cleaning up your plate,” think of joining me in giving up those habits as well.

Next time: Sevenfold Cure

Note: To learn more about natural hazards in food and water, including mycotoxins and systemic mycoses, read about the potato blight and  great famine in Ireland, the history of known fusarium toxicity, cancer-causing aflatoxin,  Valley Fever, and Caver’s Disease. If you are a doctor or you work in public health, you can brush up on natural hazards to health that have been studied as occupational hazards.