Jenny McCarthy Details What Mystery Illness Made Her Life a 'Living Hell'

Jenny McCarthy is opening up about the “living hell” she’s been dealing with after learning she had severe mold toxicity and mycotoxin poisoning in a sneak peek of Maria Menounos’ podcast.

“The last time I was here I was literally on my way to the biological dentist because I had gone through six months of living hell,” McCarthy, 53, reveals of her medical mystery — that’s now been solved — while speaking with Menounos, 47, in Us Weekly’s exclusive clip of the host’s upcoming “Heal Squad” podcast episode.

In the first look, McCarthy recalls that the nightmare all started with “an infected root canal.”

McCarthy notes that because her root canal wasn’t “cleaned out all the way,” she got a jawbone infection with “three of these little toxic pools hiding underneath my wisdom teeth.”

The actress recalls having root cavitations that just “kept getting infected,” leading her to wonder what was happening to her. “I’m on surgery, like, number eight,” she recalls thinking. (McCarthy revealed in November 2025 that she had nine surgeries on her mouth in that year alone.)

McCarthy then tells Menounos that amid her grueling dental troubles, she started having “growths on my eye,” which she describes aslooking like the “nastiest whitehead, puss-filled eraser top.”

“I’m like, ‘What the heck is this?’ They’re like you’re not washing your eyes enough. I’m like bulls***,” McCarthy remembers thinking.

McCarthy says that she had the growth surgically removed only for it to grow back four weeks later. The process continued in a vicious cycle with an “oozing infection” coming through her eye while at the same time her mouth was infected and her “implants rejected.”

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“I’m like, ‘What is going on. What is happening?’ My functional medicine doctor said, ‘OK, hold on. You’re the healthiest patient I have. We gotta go dig deeper,’” McCarthy recalls.

Once her doctor tested her for mold, McCarthy tells Menounos a lightbulb went off and they finally “figured out the problem.”

“The reason why you’re having constant infections, your body won’t heal, you’re oozing things is because you have mold. You have mycotoxin poisoning,” McCarthy says her doctor told her at the time.

The Masked Singer judge adds, “Mold releases this toxin in the dust particles and what happens is most people … with good immune systems can handle it. People with weaker  immune systems, people with leaky gut, candida, things I am already fighting [can’t].”

She proceeds to tell Menounos that the mycotoxin poisoning and mold toxicity has the possibility of being extremely detrimental to her health.

“I have a certain mold that causes seizures. [My doctor] goes, ‘If this thing that you’ve got crosses the blood brain barrier you’re going to be in the hospital having seizures,’” McCarthy reveals. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’”

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While McCarthy now has answers to what has been happening to her body, she says it hasn’t been an easy road back to better health.

“I became antibiotic resistant last year,” McCarthy tells Menounos. “The mycotoxins made me antibiotic resistant, so no wonder why infection, infection, infection. I was taking all these antibiotics that weren’t working for me anymore.”

Now, McCarthy says she is on a heavy-duty mold protocol to combat the onslaught of symptoms she’s been struggling with since 2025.

Listen to McCarthy’s full appearance on Menounos’  “Heal Squad” podcast on Tuesday, March 31.