Summary: Complicated, chronic health issues can be terribly frustrating. If you suspect mold, run the tests. Find your root cause so that your body can finally heal.
Having complicated health issues can be incredibly frustrating. When my daughter began puberty, she presented with her own set of “unusual” health concerns. Her pediatrician, my physician along with my boss, a nutritionist, recommended strategies to heal. Despite our best efforts, our health showed little improvement. It was recommended we investigate mold as a possible root cause.
I was not ready to “take on” such a beast. There was a part of me in denial. I couldn’t possibly be sick from mold. I love the smell of mold! How could I react to it? Needless to say, the thought of remediating our home was daunting.
My doctor ordered a mold urine test. Mosaic, Real-Time Laboratories, and Great Plains offer mycotoxin urine tests. Molds produce mycotoxins. These tests run around $250. False negatives do occur, particularly if you are not detoxing correctly and excreting the mycotoxins through urine. I decided to hold off on running this test since I suspected I did not detox properly.
Instead, I took the easiest, least invasive, and least expensive test, Dr. Shoemaker’s Visual Contrast Sensitivity test, which costs $15.
Click here to check the VCS test.
I also tested our home. I used the ERMI dust test. $250/test
Click here to visit Enviro Biomics.
Other diagnostics to consider are genetic testing (HLA-DR/DQ), organic acids urine test, immune globulin reaction to candida albicans, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, stool tests, and posterior nasal cultures.
Not everyone is affected by mold in the same way. One out of four individuals carry the gene HLA-DR/DQ that prevent the proper immune response to mold. Both my daughter and I have these genes. Considered the “canaries in the coal mine”, these individuals will become sick before it affects the remaining 75% of the population.
When a person carrying these genes goes into a water-damaged building, their immune system may be turned on creating a chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS). If you don’t have the gene, your immune system tags the mycotoxins and eliminates it. Having the HLA gene, the
immune system does not work properly and overreacts causing widespread inflammation.
This out-of-control inflammatory process affects every system in the body. Those with the gene suffer early on, however, the remaining 75% of the population is susceptible to the damage caused by mycotoxins. Mycotoxins can harm the entire respiratory tract, eyes, ears, intestines, liver, kidneys, skin, nerves, immune system, bone marrow, bladder, and brain.
My daughter and I do not have the same symptoms. Similar, but not exactly. My husband does not appear to have any of the symptoms that she or I have. You can see how complicated mold illness is. My dear husband has lifted his eyebrows more than once as I try to explain our health challenges, as he seems to have none. Or does he?
But there is hope. There is always hope and a path to recover.
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