What Tests Can Tell Us About Brain Fog: A Simple Guide

Everybody. Dr. Diane, your chronic illness expert here. Welcome to another episode in our brain fog month. So essentially this month we're focusing on brain fog. We've talked about a lot of things. Today. We're talking about testing. So I've already talked about making sure you work with your doctor to rule out any big bad problems, the scary stuff as far as brain fog. But we want to talk about what happens most of the time, which is those big, bad, scary tests are normal. And then you're left with, what the heck is causing this? So we talked about some causes, such as mold and such as Lyme or Bartonella or Babesia. So what are these things? So mold. I think most people have heard of mold, right? But mold will actually secrete a bunch of toxins that are very problematic to the human body. Not only can they cause inflammation to the brain like we've talked about, they've actually been shown to cause nerve symptoms, cells to die. We have a lot of nerve cells in our brain, right? So the nerve cells are dying that can make up some of the brain fog. So essentially sounds very scary, but we can get these toxins out. So essentially what I recommend for testing for this is a test called urinary mycotoxins. What you can also do in the urine is run a test called the total tox test. So you can find information about these tests in the show notes. I have a link for you guys that's a direct to consumer for lab test link. And if you're not sure about these tests and what they do exactly, make sure you show up for my next live masterclass where we will go over these things in detail and we'll talk about some of the stuff from this month that's coming up soon. Check that out. It's totally free. So essentially what I'm saying, though, is in addition to that, that mold toxin test that you definitely want to consider, you would also like to consider a full environmental toxin test called toxic tox test or total tox. That particular test is another urine test, super easy, can be done in the comfort of your own home. And essentially, it will test for mold, it will test for pesticides, it'll test for heavy metals, it'll test for glyphosates, a lot of other environmental chemicals, common chemicals seen in makeup, for example, or household products, cleaning products. So you get a lot of information. Now, typically, everybody has some stuff that comes up on these tests, but it gives an insight as to maybe what your current exposure is, maybe what products you have that are highly problematic. Once you start, once you get the results from this test, and there's a really cool app you can put on your phone called Yucca Yuka. And essentially, once you get the results from these tests, say, say you're high in a type of paraben, for example. Parabens are found in a lot of beauty products. So what you can do with this app, you. Your app basically becomes a scanner, kind of like a QR code scanner. And you scan the barcode on these products on products at home, and you're looking then for products that have parabens. And once you scan it, it will come up and it'll tell you all the toxins that are inside it. And you can start to see if there's anything you're doing that is built up in your body that could be contributing to your brain fog. And that's the power of testing. So that one's really important. I also wanted to mention the chronic infection test. So this is going to be testing for Lyme, but also for Bartonella, for Babesia. A lot of people are buying really, really poor Lyme test on the market. Lyme is basically caused by a species called Borrelia burgdurferi. But there's also a lot of other bacteria that are very similar, slightly different species, species that can cause brain fog. And so if you just do a classic Lyme test, it's going to only test for one of these species of this bacteria. When there's about a dozen or more that we're still learning in research, there's about a dozen or more of these particular types of bacteria that can cause brain fog. And if you just do a standard lab, you're going to miss it. So again, check out the information in the show notes. I really only work with these top lab companies. It's super important. One thing that we have not mentioned in this month yet that has to be mentioned when we're talking about brain fog is the gastrointestinal tract. So we talked a little about food allergies and sensitivities and testing for those a few episodes ago. And we also want to consider. We also want to consider that with gut, we could have a infection in the gut. We could have a microbiome issue where the good bacteria are, are not healthy. Right? The good bacteria in the gut actually activate our vitamins and minerals. We already talked a couple episodes ago about the importance of certain vitamins and minerals for brain health and for reducing brain fog. So if your bacteria in your gut are not active and they're not super healthy. You're probably not activating vitamins and minerals in the same way. So we got to get the gut healthy. There is a test that you will see also in my lab testing link below called the Gut Zoomer. That is a really, it's a very thorough gut test. It's a super, super thorough. It's going to tell you about bacteria, it's going to tell you about parasites, it's going to tell you about the health of the good guys. It's going to tell you if you have enough stomach acid, can talk about worms. It's super, super extensive. More extensive than just about any test on the market. So. So that's definitely important to consider. Cause another thing that can happen is if you have infections in the gut, and not everybody that has infections in the gut has symptoms in the gut. Sometimes you have an infection in the gut and you have no digestive problems, but it's manifesting as brain fog. And that's because infections can cause leaky gut. And when you have leaky gut, you can basically have increases in inflammation in your bloodstream and, and autoimmune processes where your body starts attacking its own tissue. And we see that that can even happen in the brain. So, again, I know this is scary information. A lot of times brain fog, I think, is one of the scariest symptoms, especially because so many times people cannot tell you what's going on. But there are answers. These types of tests I'm talking about can go very, very, very far for helping with answers. So I hope you will check them out. I hope you will bring your questions to my next free masterclass that's coming up really soon. Information about how to register for that is in the show notes. We're going to talk about brain fog and more. So I hope to see you there.