Do you know when to see a doctor for mold exposure?
Mold exposure issues are widely considered as health risks when there’s mold growth within an area. A wide range of symptoms are common with such and may require seeing a health professional if they persist after mold removal.
How To Know When To See A Doctor For Mold Exposure
This article takes a look at the best time to see a doctor for mold exposure.
Persons with allergies tend to be the most affected due to their sensitivity. If you belong to this category of individuals, it will be wise to take urgent steps towards seeing an expert for treatment.
As you read on, we’ll be discussing all the health impacts of mold exposure and when to get help.
A Worsening Health Condition Requires Urgent Medical Attention
Generally, people seek medical help when they feel unwell. Conditions requiring medical attention are quite varied.
While some conditions can be treated by obtaining over-the-counter medications, some others might require seeing a doctor. Knowing when to go for medical examination after mold exposure is key.
How Mold Growth Affects Health
To fully understand the topic being discussed, it’s necessary to consider the “why” and “how” of mold issues.
Without a doubt, significant mold exposure is known to have the potential to cause health problems. These problems are primarily caused by irritants and allergens produced and released by molds.
Now, touching or inhaling mold or its spores will affect your health with allergic reactions most noticeable in sensitive persons. Among the worse-hit persons are those with asthmatic conditions.
It won’t be long before asthmatic episodes break out.
Mold Symptoms to Look Out for
When there’s substantial exposure to mold, several conditions or symptoms are noticed.
These will determine whether or not to see a doctor. Common symptoms include mood changes, cognitive difficulties (such as poor memory, brain fog, and anxiety), and a metallic taste in the mouth.
Additional symptoms to look out for include dizziness or vertigo, ear ringing, tingling feeling, and sometimes numbness in extremities, as well as abdominal or muscle pains.
Affected persons may also experience weight loss or gain that can’t be explained in addition to unexplained fatigue.
There may also be digestive issues as well as dehydration and excessive thirst. When any or a combination of some of these symptoms appear, it’s high time to seek medical help.
In other words, seeing a medical doctor will be highly recommended for affected persons.
A Multi-Pronged Approach is Necessary
When mold exposure is confirmed as being responsible for all the symptoms, it’s high time you also take measures to rid your home and surroundings of such fungal growth.
In other words, while seeing the doctor, action needs to be taken to combat mold presence in your home.
Mold removal involves the actual cleanup of affected areas followed by disinfection of surfaces. More important is the need to resolve the moisture problem around your home.
This might be surprising to you but there has to be moisture presence for mold to thrive.
Without fixing such issues, it’s only a matter of time before mold growth returns after initial treatment.
In a nutshell, the multi-pronged approach includes seeing a doctor diagnose and recommend treatments, clearing up mold, and fixing moisture problems.
Mold Exposure Problems will Persist When Underlying Problems aren’t Resolved
Seeing a doctor for diagnosis and treatment of mold symptoms isn’t enough. You might temporarily regain your health only to start experiencing similar symptoms.
This mostly arises when initial mold removal is hurriedly performed. As stated earlier, moisture presence will always give rise to mold growth.
A Comprehensive Mold Remediation Treatment is Necessary
While seeing a health expert for your mold exposure issues, a mold remediation expert should be contacted as well for your home treatment needs.
Sensitive persons will require more urgent assistance by making the surroundings free of mold irritants.
During treatment, you may want to leave your home for a few days to limit further exposure until the procedure is completed. This is the best way to prevent further mold exposure as lots of mold spores will be floating around the treatment area.
Seeing a Doctor When Mold Symptoms Begin to Appear
The mold symptoms earlier mentioned are clear indicators that all is not well and there might be irritants all over your home. It’s important to note that mold spores are microscopic.
In other words, they cannot be seen with the naked eye. So when symptoms appear, it’s simply your body’s way of telling you things aren’t okay.
Initially, it may be confusing to figure out what the problem is without medical help. This is why the expertise of a doctor helps to point out the problem in addition to proffering solutions to mold exposure.
It’s important to stick to medical advice on diet changes or preventive actions that may be recommended.
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Severe Symptoms may Result
With mold exposure, symptoms may be mild, moderate, or severe. Severe symptoms pose the most threat and could result in cancer, nosebleeds, migraines, depression, difficulty breathing, and brain lesions. Sometimes, affected persons might experience hearing problems.
Doctors To See for Mold Exposure
It’s not enough to see just any doctor. There are different specialists within the medical field.
With this understanding, you want to see one that specializes in situations such as yours. Those you may be recommended to include an infectious disease physician, an allergist, or a pulmonary physician.
By seeing any of these professionals, your exact health issue is identified and appropriate treatment is administered. Apart from physical examinations which are among primary examination techniques adopted, allergy tests may also be conducted.
The different tests or diagnoses conducted help the doctor to determine the cause of your symptoms. Of course, a lot of questions might be asked to help with diagnosis.
For mold poisoning, blood tests might be run in addition to skin prick tests.
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Avoid Self Medication
Self-medication isn’t advisable for persons without medical knowledge.
You’ll need to see a trained professional such as a doctor for a thorough examination of symptoms. One of the disadvantages of self-medication is that you could be taking the wrong medication for the symptoms noticed.
So far, we’ve learned that seeing a doctor for mold exposure is best when symptoms become obvious. It will be difficult to figure out the problems alone without the help of a medical expert.