Why I’m Focusing on Fungi
Viruses, bacteria, and fungi are everywhere—in soil, water, air, on surfaces, in food, and even inside our bodies. Most are harmless or even beneficial, but some can cause serious illness. What’s less widely known is that viruses can sometimes hijack fungi as a surrogate host, using their cells to shelter, replicate, or spread. For someone with a compromised immune system, this invisible partnership is a quiet but potent threat. Fungi thrive in damp spaces—beneath kitchen sinks, in poorly ventilated bathrooms, inside washing machines—and can also be present in processed foods or even drinking water. In my own tests using petri dishes and basic microscopy, I repeatedly found Penicillium and Candida —and in some cases, viral particles hiding within fungal cells. In terms of resilience, viruses are generally the hardest to destroy, followed by fungi, and then bacteria. Viruses survive by invading living cells, fungi are hard to treat without damaging our own tissues, and bacteria—thoug...