Dr. Diane Mueller compares urinary and serum mycotoxin tests, explaining why each can miss cases. Urine tests detect active toxins but may need provocation in severely ill patients. Serum tests measure immune response but can fail if complement is the primary inflammatory pathway.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. Diane Mueller Mueller. One of the things that I'm finding myself so frustrated with right now is the confusion that people have with certain lab tests. And I'm not frustrated at you for being confused. I'm frustrated at the clinicians leading to the confusion. So many times I listen to these podcasts. I listened to one last week where there was a clinician talking about the serum mold test and how it was like blowing every other mold test out of the market. And when I looked up him, I realized that he actually was the medical director for the company he was basically saying was the best test. So he was making money on that from that testing company by saying that, but did not disclose that. So this is very frustrating to me because what I see with lab testing, like one thing that comes up a lot is mycotoxin tests in the urine versus serum test. I've seen pros and cons of both tests. In my clinical experience, I find that urinary mycotoxin tests do directly correlate with symptoms, and when I retest with clinical mycotoxin tests, they turn negative. Now, one of the cons of the mycotoxin test is sometimes when people are extremely sick, sometimes you need to provoke— you need to give them something to dump the toxins. For a while before you test them, otherwise it will be negative initially. I haven't seen that a lot, but I've seen that a few times. So, you know, so with every test there, it's just pros and the weakness. One of the pros I really see is it does show that there are active toxins in the system. Now with the blood test for mycotoxins, a lot of people will say, well, that's, you know, some people are, well, this is so much more accurate. But one of the problems with the blood test is what we're doing is we're just looking at your immune system reacting to the toxins or to the mold itself. The problem is there's a lot of different ways that the immune system reacts to toxins and to mold spores. So basically, if we wind up not having our— if we wind up not having a situation where we are— our immune system is reacting in that one specific way, right, or those two specific ways, we could miss something. So, for example, our immune system can react to, to products such as toxins and mold spores in a very— in a way that's called through the complement system. So if the complement system is the problem, that that's where the inflammatory response is from the body to mold, but these blood tests don't test the complement system, this test could look negative when it's indeed positive. So I'm not saying that it's a bad test. I'm saying that with both of these types of testing, we have to know what they're good at, what they're not. And to say that one test is like so far superior when I can find holes in both tests, I think is why people are getting confused, is because there's not a perfect test out there. So we want to do a test that makes the most sense for you for the various things. We want to get away from saying with these types of tests that, hey, the other test is like the worst thing in the world. Because there's positive and negatives about both tests. But we have to understand with any testing mechanism where it could be false negatives, where it could be false positives, what we want to do ahead of time to help make the test the most accurate. And I think if more people were talking in this sort of way, we might find that there was less confusion because it's not blasting this other test. Instead, it's really just talking about with any of the testing mechanisms the unique pros and the unique cons of these types of scenarios. So I want to make sure to also invite you, if you have not joined my Lyme mold chronic illness education and group healing hub, I want to make sure to invite you. Your first 30 days— I just changed something for this new year— I am giving away your first 30 days for free. So in my educational platform, what you'll find is a ton of videos that explain things just like I'm explaining now. That really help to clear up some of the confusion in healing from chronic illness. It'll talk about lab testing, tests to use, what the test means, protocols that I've seen in my practice work very well for my clients. And then there's 2 live Q&A calls a month with yours truly in order to answer questions just like these that come up and offer so much confusion to people. So again, your first 30 days are free. So you can go ahead and sign up at the link that I am including below, and I hope to see you guys in the Group Healing Hub. It's been a really transformative thing and a really great way to have conversations with like-minded people that are getting results, that can encourage you along the way, that can provide additional support for you, and that also know what you're going through. So Happy New Year, everybody. I hope this clears up some confusion, and I hope to see you in the Group Healing Hub.
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