Chronic Inflammation and Mold Illness – Why CIRS Drives Fatigue, Brain Fog, and Immune Dysfunction with Dr. Aaron Hartman | Inflammation | E123

It's really interesting. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, for example, is another one of those things that when I was doing my training was considered a psychiatric illness. Chronic fatigue and fibro we treated with antidepressants. Cymbalta was one of the ones that worked really well for that and people would get a little better. We used graded exercise, a whole host of things. Well, now we realize that myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is what they call it in the uk, which basically means your brain's on fire, your brain's inflamed. Mold illness, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. What are the range buildings? Scorpion bites, recluse spider bites. Why aren't even mentioning this? What am I talking about? There's still a lot of confusion in regards to mold related illness, the scientific term of which is chronic inflammatory response syndrome. So I want to talk about that briefly because there's still a lot of misunderstanding about it out there. People don't quite know about it, even though it's now starting to percolate to the top on social media, news, blogs and articles. The first thing I like to remind people is most of the literature. Initial literature from this actually is from environmental working group type committees through the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the original white papers on sick building syndrome, for example, were from governmental organizations talking about, hey, in the 80s we noticed people getting sick with the change in some of the national standards on how you do heating and cooling and wrapping buildings to make them airtight in order to save, to save energy. Right. This has been going on for quite some time. It's actually interesting the concept of water damage in building or mold in a building actually historically the most ancient thing I've read actually goes back to the Old Testament where they actually had laws for if you found a mark in a building on a spot, you clean it off and if it came back in seven days, then it was a mark for the uncleanness in the building. And back then they realized, hey, this somehow affects us, this somehow affects health and you literally have to abandon the building. Same thing would happen in certain articles of clothing, a bunch of different things. This idea of, of this causing a problem is not new. What is new is our understanding of how it impacts absolutely every aspect of your health. So I want to walk through a little bit of history from stick building syndrome to water damage building to now understanding that chronic inflammatory response syndrome can be everything from post concussive syndrome to overtraining to of course the standard one, pfisteria ciguateria Blue green algae, scorpion bites, but also breast implant illness or chronic infections. There's a whole host of things that can be related to this wonder damage building idea. But ultimately first you have to start off what is it? The technical term is chronic inflammatory response syndrome. It's a disruption in your body's innate immune system, which we don't have. We haven't historically had great testing for it, which is one of the many reasons why most physicians aren't aware of it. We didn't learn about it in medical school, we didn't learn about it in graduate school. It's one of those things you learn when you start practicing medicine and dealing with more complex, more ill people. But it's that more, more ancient part of your immune system that is was pre programmed to react with things including environmental biotoxins. And some people will refer to use the term biotoxin illness, which is another way to refer us. On a side note, in the world of chronic inflammatory response syndrome or water damage, building illness or mold related illness is the term I'm going to use going forward just because I don't want to keep on saying the same thing over and over again. You heard of Schoenfeld, who is a one of the top immunologists in the world, wrote a textbook and in it he describes this thing called Asia syndrome, which is autoinflammatory syndrome induced by juvents. And he finds four major adjuvants in his world that cause this thing. But it's really interesting because what he describes sounds 80 ish percent similar to border damage, building illness, to mold related illness. And so I think there's been a lot of smart people looking at the same elephant in the room, so to speak. And because of their scientific training background, because of how they got there, they're using different markers to describe it. And then you get into the mast cell activation syndrome world, which Dr. Afrin, Dr. Moulderings, some of the top researchers in the world on that are the top pioneers you should say in this, this field as well. Theo Harris, Theoherides, you know, again, top guys, they it's interesting that mold or water damaged buildings or the things, the things in a water damaged building, which there's over 200 things you can find in a water damage building in addition to mold, these things actually can activate mast cell activation syndrome. And if you look at MCAS and the symptoms of MCAS at about 80 to 90% sounds like, you know, water damage, building, mold related illness, which tends to sound like a lot of these Other post Lyme syndrome of note, post lab syndrome, sometimes referred to as chronic Lyme disease, is another type of chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Now research is showing that potentially pandas pans as well as autism are different perturbations, different expressions of the same thing. And so that's one of the things that makes this difficult. Literally, I've just walked through probably 12 different field specialty fields. I've talked about environmental medicine, I've talked about pediatrics, I've talked about neuroinflammatory conditions, which is a whole subset of medicine right now. I've talked about toxins as far as being bitten by animals or blue and algae runoff, which actually in the pocomoke area was actually related to copper runoff from agriculture feeding on fist area in the water. So this gets, you get an environmental mess. And that's the reason why it's really hard to nail down this crock inflammatory response syndrome, mold related illness thing because there's so many different fields of specialty that are required to actually be able to deal with it. Which is also the reason why there's so much controversy out there. Because who is the environment? Environmental medicine. Innate immune system specialist, Auto inflammatory specialist. You know, one of the interesting things that we see with SIRS is these pseudo autoantibodies. Well, one of the things that happens when you're innate. And let me explain that. If you've heard of autoimmune diseases like celiac disease or lupus or rheumatoid or, you know, whatever autoimmune diseases we help, one of the ways we diagnose it is with autoantibodies, antibodies your body makes against itself.

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One confusing but often overlooked things with SIRS is that part of this, this innate inflammation of this immature part of your immune system is that it bleeds over into your adaptive immune system, which makes antibodies. And so one of the, the hallmarks of this is you'll see false positive, low positive antibodies that might take you down the autoimmune route of lupus or rheumatoid or lupus anticoagulant is one of them, which it was looked more for. Clotting issues as well as infertility issues actually can be false or gliadin antibodies and celiac, they can be falsely positive antibodies induced by mold related illness. If you don't know that and you see those, you might go down a whole different pathway and seeing a whole different group of specialists. So that, that really requires the person who looks at this to have their foot in 12 to 15 different worlds. And personally, it's taken me after my routine medical training an additional probably 15 years to kind of get to the point where I feel like I've mastered, maybe mastered is a bad word to use, but I've learned these things well enough to feel competent and talk about it on social media and talk about on blogs and a bunch of things. But that's what innately makes this difficult is because it is so interrelated and complex and based on the specialists you see, you might get a different diagnosis. It's really interesting. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, for example, is another one of those things that when I was doing my training was kind of a psychiatric illness. Chronic fatigue and fibro we treated with antidepressants. Cymbalta was one of the ones that worked really well for that and people would get a little better. We used graded exercise, a whole host of things. Well, now we realize that myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is what they call it in the uk, which basically means your brain's on fire, your brain's inflamed, is actually related to microgliation, which are these cells that they're actually monocytes that migrate into your brain and turn into microglia. Their overactivation and the other accessory supportive cells, not neurons, but called glial cells in your brain being overactivated, including macrophages, which are the cells I was referring to, that is part of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. So all of a sudden, water damaged buildings, post concussive syndrome. It's really interesting. I Was reading a textbook or not textbook. I was reading a book on. On hyperbaric medicine written by an Israeli special physician. And one of the things they've noted over in Israel, it's a country that has a lot of ptsd, has a lot of war trauma, has a lot of post concussive stuff. But they've realized that people after a traumatic event are way, way more prone to develop chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, which we know post concussive syndrome is one of the SIRS phenomena. And they actually are using hyper. Like we're measuring blood flow into people's brain, seeing how it's changed in these patients during hyperbaric therapy. And actually the people actually were remembering all the events related to trauma and their chronic fatigue fiber was actually improving and going away with hyperbaric therapy. So why might I mention that? Because that's a totally different specialty field, different kind of medicine, which I also am certified in through ibum. IB um, that all of a sudden, knowing these data points actually helps us understand, why is this so confusing? Why. Why are so many people getting it wrong? And why are so many supposed experts or influencers sharing misinformation? Because it's so complicated and complex. And yes, you know, detoxifying make you feel a little better? Yes. Getting better, sleep, great exercise may make you feel a little better. Yes. Taking some antibiotics to treat your Lyme disease, they found, may make you feel a little better. But if you don't get down to the core of this dysregulation in your immune system and realize all the different kinds of therapies based on where you're at in your journey, whether it's lipid therapy, whether it's, you know, removing yourself from the toxin, whether it's bonding binders, muscle activation syndrome, you know, I've. You know, I've had patients who have responded very well to benzodiazepines like Klonopin. There was a point in time, my career, where I was seeing some patients with really bizarre symptoms. They'd gone with the Mayo. This one particular patient I'm thinking about, but strangely enough, a small dose of Klonopin made her feel so much better and almost erased all of her anxiety and panic and pain and a bunch of other symptoms. And it was such a small, ridiculous dose. And the thing about that, that struck me, I had multiple patients who. It's almost like they'd lick the Valium or Klonopin or Xanax or whatever, and they feel so much better and sleep so Much better. What I learned later on from Dr. Afron's group in the mast cell is actually benzos are a mast cell stabilizing medication. Aha. That's the reason why in those individuals it works so well for them. And I started incorporating some of my my kids. I have one patient in specific with Pandas pans, others Danlos, hypermobility, pots, all the thing, horrible sleep. And one of the things that's helped him sleep and now he's actually at 16 or 17, super functional. one point in time he was dysfunctional, was using low doses of a benzo which the pediatricians would do, low doses of naltrexone using SPM active which is another brain anti inflammatory to help calm his brain inflammation down. And now that 16ish year old kid who had pots and cell nomi and probably if you went to Hopkins would be diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos as well as now functioning, thriving, traveling. He's like, has dreams and hopes for the future now that he didn't have, you know, three to four years ago. It's really complicated. And so the point of this first Short Friday blog, YouTube, wherever this is going, podcast as well as where this is going is that with mold related illness or SIRS or water damage you're building or MCAS variants or long Covid or post concussive syndrome or Asia syndrome, whatever specialist you're talking about because it's so interwoven, people can get a little better with some interventions. But you have to realize talking with someone or dealing with an expert who's aware of all the perturbations and how many different types and ways this thing expresses itself is super important, including environmental medicine, including lipid medicine, et cetera. And then trauma becomes a big part of this as well. So hopefully this was helpful. I'm trying to keep these short about 10 minutes on Fridays on these little deep dives. I'm putting this out there because I've been hearing reading more and this is usually actually through my wife giving me, you know, social media stuff about people doing this, that and the other and the confusion out there. So I feel like just maybe explain it a little differently in a different light. I'm off the cuff a little bit, maybe more helpful to people, so if so, let me know. Otherwise, take care and we'll talk to you soon.

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