Chronic Fatigue, Lyme and Mold Lab Tests You May Be Missing

Hey, everybody. Dr. Diane Mueller, founder of My LymeDoc here. And in this video, we're going to talk about some of the missing tests for people when they have chronic fatigue syndrome, when they have mold illness or Lyme disease. And we're talking about all of these in the context of a couple different things. Sometimes it's the wrong test, sometimes it's an incomplete test, and sometimes it's just improper interpretation. So we really need to remember all of these things when it comes to testing and what could be missed. So I'm going to talk about chronic fatigue syndrome kind of as the principal or the overarching focus of this video, because mold testing and Lyme testing we are going to get to in this video. But mold illness and Lyme disease are actually causes of chronic fatigue syndrome. So chronic fatigue syndrome is the overarching thing we're talking about. But we'll get to your questions about Lyme tests and mold testing as well. So when it comes to chronic fatigue syndrome, we need to think about all possible root causes. So we can think about things like basic nutrients that are missing. So tests that are really good for evaluating nutrients are things like the organic acid test or the Nutri eval. We can think about things like mitochondrial deficiencies. So mitochondrial deficiencies or mitochondrial dysfunction. There's a reason why the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, is dysfunction. So if the powerhouse of the cell, the mitochondria, is dysfunctioned, then you are not going to be able to produce the energy at a cellular level, leading to chronic fatigue. So then we have to think about, well, why would the mitochondria be not working and not functioning well? A huge reason why the mitochondria may not be working and may not be functioning is because of things infecting or things or toxins that are impacting the mitochondria. So this is where we get into our environmental toxins. So we can have things like molecular mold and mycotoxins. The best test I really find for evaluating mold and mycotoxins is the urinary mycotoxin test. So that's a really important test. Now, beyond that, we want to consider things like toxic metals. We want to consider other environmental toxins. The total tox test by Vibrant Wellness works really well for this, where they're looking for things like plastics and pesticides and herbicides and BPAs and other components in the environment, such as glyphosate. So any of these types of situations can basically cause mitochondrial issues. We also want to make sure that when we're talking about mitochondrial issues, we are doing full tests for any chronic hidden infections. And this is where, when we talk about Lyme disease, it's really very important. So with Lyme disease, a lot of times people are just running standard tasks through their conventional doc, which are either the ELISA or the Western blotch. And these tests are not very accurate. The ELISA test has been shown in research to miss Lyme disease 66% of the time. And even if you get a test called the Western blot, which is a standard test run very commonly in conventional medicine, this particular test is only testing for one species of Borrelia, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Now we know there's well over a dozen species of this, this particular Borrelia. So a test that's only going to look for one of them is going to miss a lot of Borrelia. So it's really important when we're thinking about Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, mitochondrial dysfunction and getting to the root cause, that we're using tests that are going to evaluate for many more species of Borrelia, plus other insect borne infections such as Bartonella, Babesia, Anaplasma, Ehrlichia, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, West Nile Virus, Chlamydia, Mycoplasma and more. The test that has been most complete for this is Vibrant Wellness's test. The it's called the tick borne 2.0. They also have a tick borne 1.0. I order the tick borne 1.0 a lot in my clinical practice because it's a nicer price point for people. But if budget is not an issue and you can really just say, okay, you want everything. And to test for everything, you can get that, that tick borne 2.0 for an even more thorough panel. But you really want to look for all of these types of crops, chronic hidden viruses that could be there, other chronic hidden infections. Another thing I want to mention, as far as the, you know, the cause of all these things could be something called Marcons. Marcons is a type of staph. It lives very far back in the sinus cavity, so almost all the way back at the ear. It's kind of like, I kind of call it MRSA. For those of you that know MRSA, that form of staph, it's kind of MRSA's evil twin sibling. You could, you could say, so basically this particular type of staph will disrupt our immune system. It can actually really disrupt our hormonal system. So it can impact thyroid and adrenals. It can even impact melatonin, our sleep hormone. So if we have Mark Ons leads to melatonin issues, leads to sleep issues. Now you can see how that's tied into the fatigue. So Mark Ons is something that a lot of people are not thinking about. Now, of course, we also, if somebody is in a moldy environment, we do want to make sure, or I'm sorry, if they have mold in their body. If so, you see see a urinary mycotoxin test come up high showing that somebody has high levels of mold in their body. You want to make sure it's not in their environment. The most thorough test for analyzing if mold is in the environment, it's called a panel 7. The panel 7 is going to look at fungus, but also bacteria. But another great test out there that a lot of people are using that looks that's very, very thorough for fungus is called the, the ermi. The ERMI is a test. It's a dust sample. You do a dust sample in your own house that will actually look to see if there' issues where you have the, the mold toxins present. In addition, you can get a reduced version of the ERMI called the Hertz me. The Herzme is a great test. For a lower price, it does a great job. If it's positive, you know there's mold there. The thing you always want to understand about a hurts me is if it's negative, there could be some mold that is there that the hurts me did not test for. But it does do a good job of looking for the most problematic molds. I also want to tell you about some of the other basic things we need to up clean. Consider so many people, for example, don't have a full thyroid panel. People are just looking at TSH, which is the brain thyroid hormone. Sometimes you get TSH and T4 run. T4 is thyroid hormone in an inactive form. So you want to make sure that you have TSH run free T4, free T3, reverse T3. Because reverse T3 is a type of T3, a type of the active thyroid hormone the that will block thyroid hormone from functioning. So if you don't test for reverse T3 and you just test for regular T3, regular T3 is that active thyroid hormone. And if you only test for regular T3 and not reverse T3, it can look like your thyroid hormone is normal in the blood. But the thyroid's not available to get into the cells. And if it's not able to get into the cells, it's basically a Nerd. It doesn't do anything though. The other thing that you want to make sure with thyroid, you want to make sure you test the antibodies. So make sure that you're not having an autoimmune attack on the thyroid, which is very, very common. Missed a lot of the time and can change treatment strategy. You want to make sure that you are considering full hormone pictures including sex hormones and adrenal hormones. So you want to look at cortisol at DHEA s. You want to look at estrogen at testosterone and at progesterone. You want to make sure all of these hormones are working in full capacity as well as it's also reasonable to get a home sleep study done. So by using a. You can do it. It's called a nocturnal oximetry. It's pretty easy, low cost home sleep study you can have done. And this is just going to make sure you don't have something like a mild sleep apnea, which we are now realizing more and more in science. Finally, that this is not just occurring, that sleep apnea is not just occurring in overweight people. Sometimes that, that being overweight because of the, the extra fat around the neck can actually squeeze the air, the airway and it can impact and be a reason for sleep apnea. But there's many different reasons for sleep apnea and not getting enough oxygen at night, which can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome that you want to make sure of. So these are some of the, you know, the broad things that people are not thinking about. Usually when people watch videos like this, they find that, okay, well maybe you've had a lot of this testing done, but not all of this. So this, these are some things that you want to think about. So if this has been helpful for you, please do subscribe to this channel. Please don't keep me a secret. Please share this information with your friends and family and I thank you very much. Information about my clinic and about how I help people is below. I do have a very, very low price group program for people where you can join my community and get these tests run direct to consumer. So look for information about that in the show notes as well. All right, thank you everybody. See you in the next one.