Episode 96: Lyme Disease or Mold Might be the Key to Finally Improving Your Health, with Dr. Dian...

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, the functional gynecologist. I'm a board certified OB, GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey. And I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain period issues, anxiety, insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome, Ladies. Welcome back. Thank you for tuning in every week. This just fills my heart that I can help you guys figure out what the heck's going on in your bodies and what you can do about it. Because if we can empower ourselves and each other, we can actually change our health and change our society. That is my huge goal, is for women to reclaim their health, like take back control. And that looks like seeking alternative answers that you're not getting from your regular doctors a lot of the time. So, you know, getting educated, doing, listening to podcasts, reading books, and just keep asking why, why, why? That is how you're going to make that headway. So I'm really excited for today's guest because we are talking about something that we don't talk a lot about. And you know, a lot of women come to me because of typical hormone imbalance symptoms or thyroid issues, that type of thing. And for the majority of women, we have major breakthroughs. We heal their gut, we get your liver functioning better and we get your thyroid balance and your sex hormones come on into balance. And then there's a few of you that you struggling, you know, three, four months into this journey and you're barely making headway. And the question, you know, what I often see which breaks my heart is that your primary care doctor will say, well, you're just, you're cheating on your diet or you're not exercising enough or you must not be telling the truth is essentially what's coming across. And, you know, I feel bad for those women because that is not probably what's going on. It's probably some deeper root cause issues that haven't been evaluated and addressed. And so my guest today is going to talk about that stuff because for a few of you out there, this might be the missing piece of the puzzle of what's really going on at a deeper level. So, you know, mold, particularly Lyme disease, these things are not evaluated because they're not easy to evaluate. She's going to talk about that. She's going to talk about the limitations with testing, especially with conventional medicine, and. And the limitations with understanding, interpreting, and treating. So I would not recommend that you just go to any old doctor and expect them to know how to treat you for these types of situations. So this is a really interesting episode. It might not pertain to you, but you might not know. You might listen and go, oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense. Like, women with infertility who have premature ovarian insufficiency or failure, Premature menopause, chronic autoimmune thyroid stuff that just doesn't get any better. Rheumatoid arthritis, symptoms with a negative rh factor. All kinds of confusing pictures where your doctor, you know, scratches their head and doesn't really give you an answer. This woman might have your answer. So I hope that you'll listen all the way through. I would love for you to share this episode with all the women in your life, especially if you have someone in mind that you're thinking, oh, my gosh, this kind of sounds like my friend so and so, or my sister or whatever. Like, please share this episode with them. They need to hear this information. We need to support each other as women and really just get rid of that competitive mentality or that judgmental mentality, like, she's better than me. I don't want to help her out. Like, we are all in this together, and we need to lift each other up. So please share with everybody, and if you're getting anything from this, it would just mean the world to me if you would hit the subscribe button. Leave me a review, because that tells itunes that you want to hear more of this information. And that's the only way to really make a shift in the system is for us to say what's important to us and make that known. So thank you so much. Let me sing Dr. Diane's praises because she's just so awesome.

All right.

As a survivor of mold illness, lyme disease, and chronic IBS symptoms, or irritable bowel, Dr. Diane Muller is passionate about helping others restore their health and passion for life. Just like many of her patients, Dr. Diane struggled with chronic fatigue, extreme digestive dysfunction, and chronic pain for many years. With conventional medicine only offering mildly palliative treatments, Dr. Diane's journey to heal herself led her to complete two doctorate degrees in holistic health care. She's a doctorate degree in naturopathic medic and a doctorate degree in acupuncture and oriental medicine. Way to take control of your health, right? Like no one else can figure out what's wrong with me, let me go to medical school. So she's also certified in functional medicine. So this woman definitely has knows what she's talking about. She has the degrees to back it up, but she has so much amazing experience. Experience and wisdom. So that's what I'm really excited about because she is relentless in helping patients find the root cause of their chronic issues. She's incredibly empathetic because she's gone through this struggle herself. The cool thing is she works with her husband, Dr. Miles. They have co founded Medicine with Heart functional medicine. So medicinewithheart.com check out them out. And now they've created a certification program to train functional practitioners how to tackle these hard topics. Like, I personally don't treat mold and Lyme disease because it is that advanced, and my specialty, you know, doesn't lie within that. And I would encourage you to find someone who specializes in this if you think that's what's going on, and she's going to help you understand and get some clarity on. Do I really need to be tested for all this stuff or don't I? So this is an awesome episode. So here we go. Welcome, Dr. Diane, to the Functional Gynecologist podcast.

Hi, Dr. Tabitha. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. I think this is such an important conversation because I see a lot of women who, you know, they've been searching for answers for many years. Right. And they start working with a functional medicine practitioner, and they get a few wins here and there, but they're not really making a full recovery. And I feel like you might be the missing piece for these women. So I'm excited to talk to you today.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think this chronic disease epidemic is such a serious thing, and there's so many root causes that are just not being talked about in medicine yet. And people are being told, you know, that they're either fine or they have to live with their symptoms, and it's not true. They just haven't found the root answers and the root causes yet.

Yeah. So how did you find the root causes? Because I know that you were sick. You. I would love for you to share your story with my listeners of how did you go on this path and how did you figure all this out?

Yeah, yeah, happy to. I think, you know, it's so common. So many of us end up in this profession when we have our own stories and struggles. And for me, it started. I actually started with just. Just some chronic digestive issues when I was really young. It was pretty severe chronic constipation. I remember even in high school having times where I would go, like, sometimes even like 10 days without a bowel movement. And obviously that, like, comes with a lot of distension and pain and that sort of thing. And. And that was a huge part of what direct got me into medical school was because I was really struggling. And I was just given the classic IBS label because none of the tests came out and said anything that really got me into holistic medical school. Really looking to find out, okay, what are other ways of looking at the body and what are other answers that could be out there. Then when I was in school, I started getting really, really crazy symptoms, like pain so bad in my legs that sometimes it would feel like my legs were being sawed off. I would have these crazy depersonalization events where I would leave my house and I was so chronically fatigued and had so much chronic fibromyalgia at the time that I wasn't walking much. But I would do these five minute walks around the block, and sometimes I would get about a block away from my house, and it was like my brain would almost dissociate from my body, and I would have these, like, amnesic type of episodes where I would forget where I lived, you know, and it would be like 30 seconds would be really scary, and then all of a sudden something would shift and I would be like, sort of normal in my head again. So I started having, like, some, you know, some really crazy things like that. But again, like, all lab tests were pretty normal, and it was just kind of written off as medical school disease syndrome, because, you know, these programs we're in are so intense. And it wasn't until I got out of school and so many of my colleagues, when I had talked to them six months later, we're getting so much better from their fatigue. And at that point in time, I was actually considering, like, do I need to basically move to a deserted island and live out my days? Because my symptoms were so bad, I thought, surely I must be dying. And so when I talked to my colleagues and knew that they were getting better and I was on the path to what I thought was death, that's when I really decided, like, there's something else going here, going on here, and started doing more investigative research. And that really is what helped me find Lyme disease and mold illness. Illness and several other parasites and gastrointestinal things. So it's one of those things where it's like, once I started doing lab tests that were outside of the normal and outside of the box, even though all of those were negative. Once I started doing these other type of lab tests, everything was positive. It was just like one positive finding after another.

Wow. I think that's such an important point is just because you had labs done and they were normal doesn't mean you had the right labs done, because there are so many new tests and capabilities out there that conventional medicine just has not adopted, you know, for reasons. That's a whole nother podcast episode that we don't want to get into. But there is this whole world of advanced functional testing. So tell my listeners, like, what are the main tests that you did from the get go?

Yeah. So it's really, really important to understand, I think, with this conversation of lab testing, the type of lab test, the lab company lab test, is ordered from even the practitioner that's interpreting the lab test. All of these things have to go into account when it comes to truly getting good information. So, like Lyme disease, the classic Lyme test that's standardly ordered is called the elisa. And there's actually some studies that are showing that this standard test has a 66% chance of a false negative. And so when we're doing tests and a lot of people, you know, I just want to be clear that when we're talking about this for your listeners, that I'm not just, you know, want to name off, like, go get Lyme tested, for example, because if we do that and you have Lyme and you're just doing the standard test, there's a 66% chance that if you're positive, it's going to show negative. So doing a western blot Lyme test combined with what's called like a pcr, which for your listeners, when, you know, this is when we look for the DNA fragments of the, you know, the Lyme and the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, that's going to be a much better test for Lyme. And then for mold illness, we can do tests that are called like a urinary mycotoxin test, which is we're actually looking for the toxins in the urine itself that mold secretes. Mold is really, really common, you guys. About 24% of people have a genetic anomaly where when they breathe and mold, their immune, due to their genes, can't recognize that that toxin exists and therefore can't eliminate it from their body. And mold can cause a ton of hormonal problems. And so when it comes to mold testing, looking for those Toxins are really important. And sometimes that is always, that's not always enough to tell for sure if mold is ill. So you can do blood tests called an hladr, which will look for those mold genetics and also something called a TGF, which is transforming or transcription growth factor beta 1. So it's a TGF beta 1. And that combined with the HLA are done in the blood, the urinary mycotoxins, obviously done in the urine. And then we can use some of those blood markers and those urine molds toxin markers to look for that as well.

And so that is great information. And like you said, you don't want to just go out and ask your regular doctor for those tests because they'll look at you sideways, like, what are you talking about? Right. But you made another quick point that I just want to reiterate. Like you need a functional practitioner to help you interpret these results and know what to do with them because they are not super straightforward. It's not like checking your blood sugar. Here's the number, you know, here we go. There's so much more involved. And so I think it's really important to work with someone like you or your husband. Right. He's your partner. That's pretty awesome. So I would love to like go through a scenario. So take me, for example. I developed Hashimoto's at 17 and I went through medical school as well. Super toxic, very malignant situation. And I came out on the other end just completely wiped out and exhausted. I had no stores of any vitamins or minerals left. My gut was a wreck. You know, IBS run into the bathroom all the time. So if I wanted to work with you, what would that look like?

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up that story because I think one of the most important things for people to wrap their brains around that is so different than the culture we live in is the connectivity of our body. So it's like Hashimoto's ibs. And when we're talking about some of these disease processes, like one of the first things I think is to help people understand that the root causes, and I say that plural because in 12 years of practicing medicine, I've never seen it, seen it singular. So I'm sure it could exist. I have yet to see it. So generally it's going to be the root causes and it's. And it's so connected. Right. So we see that, for example, from like a Hashimoto's perspective that somebody has to have a gene. Right. As we know in order to get Hashis and that the gene has to be expressed so it has to be turned on. Well, there's so many different things that can actually cause a gene, a disease promoting gene to turn on. And Lyme disease can do it, mold toxins can do it, other environmental toxins, ton of other infections. So I think one of the most important things for listeners to get out of this as far as like where to start and what to do is to really start orienting the mind to the difference between holistic practitioners like you and I versus like conventional is that really working and finding a practitioner that's going to look and say, okay, whether it's chronic fatigue or female hormone imbalance symptoms or sleep hygiene or sleep issues or thyroid issues or whatever it is that when we go to a specialist, one of the problems is sometimes if it's a conventional specialist is that they're oftentimes going to be looking safe. It's thyroid, you know, just that thyroid and just prescribing thyroid hormone. And when we're doing things that are more holistic, we're always asking why. And when it comes to why we're looking, of course, as I know you and I know, like what are the root causes? Why did, why did Hashi's express in you, you know, why did I have fibro? And that's going to be beyond looking at some muscular skeletal test or some thyroid tests that really finding a clinician that is holistic, that's functionally minded, that which basically means they're going to look at the entirety of the body and all of the imbalances that might contribute to the development of something like Hashimoto's for example.

Yeah, that is such an important point. And I can just picture all of the things that were going on in my life to create that perfect storm. But you know, I was a conventional gynecologist. I wasn't trained to sit down and have an hour long conversation with my patients. So that kind of stuff could never be figured out when I was practicing conventional medicine. You're very much focusing on symptoms. What are your complaints? What do I have to stop your complaint? Not like, oh my gosh, what happened when you were a teenager to activate this disease process and what's contributed to it since then. And so I look back and I can pinpoint mold exposures and other toxins, my mercury. I had a ton of mouth work done while I was pregnant as a teenager and stressed out to the max and getting fluoride treatments and swimming in a chlorine pool, all of these things. And it was only because going through functional training and understanding, you need to look at the entire life of your patient and figure out what's going on in their timeline. And what are these root causes like you mentioned that you can finally start to uncover because you can't even think of what test to order. There's a million tests that we could order. The testing is endless in functional medicine, am I right? So true. I mean, people could go down all kinds of rabbit trails just trying to do it themselves. Like, oh, I'm going to do these five different stool tests and, you know, immune tests and everything else. So I love that you're like, let's figure this out and then decide what testing to order. How long is the process usually for patients once you figure out what's going, like, if you wanted to reverse a problem like mine, are we talking three months, a year, two years?

Yeah. I mean, I'm glad you're saying a problem like yours because already I think in your language it's illustrating the fact that the answer to this is going to depend upon the problem that we're dealing with. Right. So from a situation where we have a Hashimoto's and there's an autoimmune situation as well as we have a gastrointestinal situation, and those two things are oftentimes so intimately related, and research showing that GI problems and intestinal permeability, which is what many listeners may know as leaky gut, there's research that's showing that we, we pretty much have to have something that is happening, causing leaky gut as a link to an autoimmune condition such as Hashimoto's, where our immune system's attacking our thyroid. So in a situation like that, you know, one of the things that I think will make it shorter for somebody like you as far as treatment time is the fact that you already, by having that IBS diagnosis, like it's very clear, because we know in research that's related, right? So we know we have to do the gut work. And that gut work will not only help fix the gut and the symptoms there, since it's related to the autoimmune disease, it will trickle down to helping reverse those, you know, those autoimmune markers and that autoimmune attack and expression. So most commonly with those sorts of situations, I see six to 12 months as being how long it takes to say heal. And by heal, what I'm looking for in that situation is from a Hashi's perspective, autoimmune markers to return to normal for symptoms to be normalized. Sometimes I find that that means that people are totally off thyroid. Sometimes I do find that, hey, a little bit of bioidentical thyroid does tend to help. But either way, we want to see that the immune system is not in attack mode anymore, that the immune system of operating normal and the gut is healed and there's no more diarrhea, the IBS is normal, the guts no more, you know, no longer inflamed. We can test for all of that, of course. So six to 12 months is what I see with that, with, you know, other types of chronic situations, like, say we're in a situation where it was something like mold illness or Lyme disease or other Lyme disease is a chronic hidden bacteria that a lot of people don't realize is not just from tick bites, it's from mosquito bites and flea bites and all these different things. So if it is something that is more like an insect driven, say, load of bacteria, when insects bite us, they, luckily for them, not so luckily for us, deliver everything that they carry so we can get bitten by, you know, a tick and get, or a mosquito or a flea or whatever and like get the entire bolus of everything that they have in their bloodstream enters ours. So there is something more from Sega Hashi's perspective, where it's like a microorganism that is a chronic hidden, stealth microorganism that burrows inside of our body and gets inside of our cells and it's trickier to get out. And if that's what has turned the gene for Hashis on and it's not, say, more simple like just a leaky gut situation, or mostly a leaky gut situation, then we're probably looking at more like a one to two years of treatment time. So it really, that's, you know, that's what's kind of cool about functional medicine is that that it is so individualized that we can speak largely in these numbers for expectation reasons. But then we get into. And we actually get into the why. And after we get some of that lab work back, then it's a lot easier to sit down with our patients and say, hey, this is what you can expect as far as treatment length and treatment time, because it really is going to be dependent to. People with Hashi's and ibs, depending upon what their causes are, could have very different rows and paths of both what the treatment looks like as well as what the time to wellness looks like.

Oh my gosh, I'm So glad you said that because that's the money right there is doctors treat someone with thyroid disease, everybody's the same, they all get Synthroid. It's all just like, we need to replace your thyroid medicine that you're not making, when in reality you have these root causes that need to be dealt with and they could be completely different than your sister's thyroid issue or your friends, you know, So I just want women to understand that it does take time. You know, you didn't get to this point in your health overnight and you're not going to return to amazing health overnight. So I know for myself it was like a 20 year journey, but, but obviously I don't want it to take that long. Right. Find somebody who knows what they're doing to get you going. The other thing that really hit home with me was when you were talking about Lyme disease and how the bacteria burrows. Like, I remember in medical school learning that the bacteria is in the shape of a spirochete. So it's like a screw or corkscrew. And it literally does screw into your tissues. It's not hanging out your bloodstream, easily identifiable, and it goes up in your brain and causes neurological illness. And so often I think that that is going on and we are not diagnosing it properly because like you said, they're missing it 60% of the time because they're doing the wrong test. So I know for me, I live in Michigan, we have deer tips, ticks all over the place. I mean, I have deer in my backyard and then my dogs go out and hang out with them. And you know, my dog is being treated for a tick borne anaplasmosis right now. So it's super common. And I think that it's really overlooked. Wouldn't you agree?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's overlooked because there's still so much medical belief that you have to be from the New England states. You know, you have to be from Connecticut or, you know, some of those, some of those New England states. States where it's, it is, you know, a little more endemic in some of those areas. But it doesn't mean that it's, it's not way more widespread. In fact, there's this songbird actually that exists out of Canada. And the songbird is known for basically pairing the larvae of infected ticks in its, in its belly. And essentially what's, you know, kind of gross about this is as it flies over the world, it, you know, naturally like, you know, defecates onto the earth as it's flying. And in its poop, essentially, are those larvae infected ticks. They get onto the earth, they hatch, and all of a sudden we have, you know, these ticks. And so this is thought to be one of the ways that Lyme disease is spreading are through these songbirds. And it's, you know, it's just devastating, I think, to people because there's so much medical belief that it's just in the New England states and that we have to have that bullseye rash, you know, that rash that looks like a target lesion, which now we know in research is actually only there 25% of the time. So I think that's why it's so commonly missed is there's still. There hasn't been say, update yet in the conventional model as far as when to look for it and how to look for it. And, you know, some of the. Some of the unknown, you know, unusual signs and symptoms. Like, you know, since I know a lot of your listeners are interested in hormone balance, we. One of the things we see with Lyme is it can get into the brain. It can change sometimes a hormone called MSH or melanoma stimulating hormone. And MSH has the capacity to change our. The signaling from the brain to the female and male genital glands that are basically secreting these sex hormones and has the ability to change thyroid secretion and adrenal secretion. And so all of that can actually come from Lyme disease. And I think it's being missed in part because we oftentimes just think like, like, oh, you know, thyroid disease, like we're talking about, I should just look at thyroid hormones. Yeah.

Wow. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by what you just said. And that's why we do this podcast. You know, I mean, women need to know that conventional medicine does not have all the answers. And until big pharma, you know, comes out with some branded medication to treat Lyme disease, there's going to be no research in it, no funding, no interest whatsoever. And so you really do have to look outside at functional and integrative medicine when it comes to this. But so I would love for you to share, like, a little picture or snapshot of what somebody looks like before and then what somebody looks like after you take care of their Lyme disease or their mold.

Yeah, and before, you know, Lyme and mold are basically known as the great mimickers, because from a symptom picture, like, if you pull up a symptom picture of Lyme or Mold illness. The symptom picture is like longer than I can move my hands and stay within the frame of this camera. You know, it's huge. It's a really, really big list. And so it's, you know, from like a before and after, it looks all sorts of different ways. Like I've seen people where mold, one of the biggest thing mold is doing is actually causing GI distress, stress, you know, that's not as common. Like most people have a much bigger list of symptomatology. So it's really common to have sleep disorders, night sweats with mold and some of these insect borne infections are huge. A lot of times people think, especially women, women will think they're having hormonal problems, especially things like early onset menopause because it's night sweats and temperature dysregulation and flushing during the day that really mimics a hot flash. And it's actually not that it's, it's Lyme disease or mold illness and it could be, you know, translated to these things causing that hormonal imbalance, but it's still really rooted in, in these other conditions. So migrating pain is really, really common in Lyme, meaning it's in the shoulder one day, the hip another day. Stationary pain that feels like rheumatoid arthritis is really common in mold. So before and after, you know, some people are like functioning but just have symptoms they can't figure out. And then I have people all the way up to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's that we now know. And research can be misdiagnosed. Lyme and mold and typically that's not figured out till autopsy. And so I've seen people from a, I'm functioning, I don't feel well, but I can at least get through my days and do my work all the way to I'm disability, I'm living in a home and I have to have support from before and after can look like everything's normal, you know, like after for me as well as, you know, so many of my clients is like, I feel better in my 40s than I did in my 20s, you know, and that's because of this great work. But it only happens when we do all of these different, you know, root causes. We actually figure out the root. So even though we do think that Lyme disease, the bacteria that causes Lyme may live inside of us kind of like chickenpox does, does for, for the rest of our lives, it's still not 100% clear in research. But it looks that way at this Point. It's kind of the current working theory and research right now. And so even if that's the case, even if we coexist with it, just like we do with the. With chickenpox. Just like with chickenpox, most people don't have reactivation of chickenpox as shingles. Most people always are fine living and co existing with chickenpox. And same thing with Lyme. We may not be able to totally ever get rid of it it, but we can get it to a point where we basically don't have it because we have zero symptoms that are associated with it.

Wow, that is so exciting to hear that you can come so far, you can come from being disabled, but I know I've seen it in so many other practitioners. That's what they can provide. If you hit on it, you do the comprehensive approach and you're really tackling every area. I think that's the really important piece of it. And so you explained that Lyme disease is more common than we realize and why it's more rampant than we realize. What about mold? So I often hear people say, oh, well, you know, my house is new, or I don't smell any mold, or I don't see any mold. Can you just talk about mold exposure a little bit?

Oh, man, I'm so glad you asked me this. It's a really important question. So it's estimated that at least about half of the buildings in the United States are water damaged. And there's a few things to understand is that that smell of mold is basically, it's a volatile organic compound. It's a voc, similar to what some paints have. But it's important to understand that not all molds will actually secrete that. So just because you don't smell that, all that really means is likely it's not a mold present that produces a voc. It doesn't mean there's not a mold present. And so another thing that's really important is to understand that these standard tests that happen, like when we buy or sell homes and somebody's coming around with their moisture meter and doing these tests, these types of ways of scanning for mold are not very good. There's a couple reasons for that. One, some molds don't need a chronic water source to grow. You know, some molds are, they can grow very, very quickly and they can be there and they don't have to have that sustained, continual water source. Other molds do. The other thing to know is that oftentimes when these remediators or these Inspectors are coming in, they're just taking air samples. Well, stachybot trees, which is commonly known as black mold, is actually really, really dense and heavy, heavy. So it falls out of the air and lands on surfaces. So unless your inspector is doing air and a surface sample, you're gonna miss the like the most predominant mold. And another thing to say there, because I know probably some listeners will go online and they're gonna read something like just stick a petri dish out and then you'll be able to test her mold. So the problem with the petri disk test is that we'll take it to the black mold examples. Black mold actually takes a while to grow. It does need a continued water source, oftentimes for three weeks before it's going to even grow. So usually it's some sort of slow leak or a big flood and just taking a really long time to dry something out. These are the types of things that typically will contribute to black mold. Just like a very, very slow leak behind drywall or something where people don't even know it's happening. And with black mold, because it does take two to three weeks, Weeks. What will tend to happen in like petri dish test. Dish test where you put a petri dish out and you're waiting for the mold to land in that petri dish. Well, there's some molds that can grow really quickly that are not actually biological problems, meaning they don't hurt human beings. Not all mold hurt human beings. So in this petri dish test, what tends to happen is you can get a very quick growth of some of these non toxic molds. And then something like black mold won't have the space to grow because it takes a few weeks or people don't live those, these dishes out long enough. So that's also not a very good test. And then the other thing I've seen is that people that are really good inspectors, they will actually come and they'll drill a tiny little hole behind drywall, very, very tiny, and put a little device there where they can take samples behind the drywall. And I've seen situations where like I thinking of one patient in particular who we treated for mold, we had tested her house, her house looked fin and she got a little better when we treated. But we were not making much progress. And when we treat molds and we don't make much progress, every time I've questioned if the test was accurate because we weren't making progress. And we went and we did retest and more tests. I've never Been wrong yet with, you know, it's like, if we're not getting better with mold and we're doing treatment for it, you gotta be having exposure for some. Somewhere from somewhere. And this one patient, like, she basically. We tested her house. Her house was fine. We went through treatment. Nothing was really changing. So we actually. She was awesome. She had somebody actually come and like, put a hole that's significant, not like a little pinpoint, like a significant hole in our drywall, because we were just at wit's end, like, this has to be somewhere. And it was like an entire room behind this drywall, like flooring to ceiling, like, all wrapped around this entire room, covered. Covered in black mold. And the initial test, like, everything was fine. Even, like, even these other types of great tests I'm talking about. We did the air, we did the samples, you know, the, the dust. It was more than just moisture meters, and everything looked fine. So it's one of those things where I really think it's such an important question because so many people are like, I got my house inspected or my house was built in the last 10 years. And these are not, unfortunately, ways we can rule out mold. You really need to be working with an inspector that understands the biological problems with mold and is not just doing things like taking samples on the inside air and comparing that with the outside air. Because I just see over and over and over again that gets missed for people.

Yeah. And when an inspector is doing appraisal for a home sale, he's trying to sell your home. He's not trying to help you figure out your medical problems. So their purpose is completely different. And so I think they look at things different. Different as well. But, you know, I built a brand new house. It was five years ago, and I'm in Michigan. It was the middle of winter when that wood was all wet and rained on and snowed on. The basement was stopped up with water until the walls started going up. And so I think sometimes the brand new homes are the worst because you have that potential there. And then on top of it, it, you have all those VOCs, all those chemicals from all the brand new build, all the woods, all the plastics, all the vinyls and poly, you know, polyurethanes. And like, I find the new homes to be super toxic.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the other thing to add on to that is that environmentally conscious is not biologically conscious. Meaning as we've moved into, like lead certified buildings and we're really making. Making sure there's not like a loss of energy, which is I agree is like, wonderful for the environment. And I think it's an important conversation to have. And what a lot of people don't realize is one of the things that actually keeps mold from growing is airflow. So when we are sealing our buildings and making them so environmentally, you know, conscious, we are actually making them biologically unconscious. So it is like, you know, even though it's like not a say best thing from a power saving situation, we will open up, like on a cold winter day. We'll wait for the warmest winter day, but still a cold winter day. We try to time it and we'll open for like a couple hours every chance we can get. You know, try to do it at least once a week, open all the windows and doors in the house for an hour and just allow all of that air to circulate to try to prevent and work with us. Because we do live in a, you know, new, really constructed house. And this is something that is, you know, a huge problem in newer homes.

Homes. Wow, that's a really good point. I love, like, open the windows, get the air flowing, get those toxins out of there.

Yes.

Oh, my goodness. So do you have your clients always do the mold testing throughout the home in addition to the, you know, personal urine testing and blood tests that you were talking about?

Yeah, usually I'll start with the. The personal test to see is it a problem in the them? It's not a problem in them. You know, if they're not showing any problems of mold buildup in the body, then I'm not worried about their house. And that's an important distinction because what we're really talking about for many people in mold illness is this genetic anomaly where the immune system's not recognizing the toxin that molds creates. We breathe in the toxin, the toxin builds up inside of us, and that causes a lot of the symptoms, including a lot of the neurological damage. We can also get mold spores growing inside of us and secreting the toxins because the mold itself is inside of. Of us. But the, the situation is, it's like, because it's a genetic situation, you can have multiple people in your house and only some of them could have this, you know, these disease processes. So it's one of those things where it's like, if it's not building up in the individual, what it means is that you're not genetically susceptible. Which means that most people that are not genetically susceptible can actually live in a moldy place and not have symptoms because their body is actually detoxing. The Toxic byproducts of the mold just fine. So we tend to see, is it built up in the body, you know, taking it one step at a time for people. So we, you know, keep this as cost contained as possible. It's not building up in the body, then it's not really a problem if there's, you know, if it's in the home. As long as they're not having, you know, the. As long as they're detoxing. Okay. So that's the point of testing the body first.

Oh, my gosh. I bet there's somebody listening right now who was so happy you said that. Because what I've heard from so many women is people think I'm crazy because I'm the only one who's got a problem with this. Or, you know, I've had people who've had such extreme issues, like they've had to move away, you know, more than once to find the right living situation. And that just. That is it right there. Like, we're all individuals, all our genes are handling and detoxing things so uniquely from the person next to us, and we need to give each other some grace because I think that we're really judgmental on people with chronic disease. You know, you get the fibromyalgia label and people look at you different. The medical community treats you different. It's sad to say that, but it's so true. I see it all of the time. And, you know, is that why you wrote your book? Like, let's talk about your book.

Oh, man, there's so many reasons I wrote that book.

My listeners, what it's called.

It's called use your mind to heal your mold and Lyme. And it's. I called it that. We named that. It is a mind body approach to Lyme and mold illness and to the symptoms that are created from these disease processes. But we named it specifically about the mind. More to bring awareness to people about the power of the mind. And I always like to explain this because as somebody that's like, you know, survival of IBS and fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, all these, like, diagnoses that people in the medical community don't take seriously. I understand so well what it's like to be told, like, that's in your minds or you're depressed or like, here's an ssri. Like, I was put on ssri. I was put on anti anxiolytics. You know, at one point, because of this had to just be in my brain.

Yeah.

So I Get all that. And. And so I really like to explain that the title use your mind to heal your mold and lyme is in no way saying this is in your mind. In no way. Like this is no way saying you're making it up. That is completely not wrong. They're not accurate with what. What it's about. What it is saying is because of the neurological effects of the toxins from Lyme disease, from mold illness, what tends to happen for people is it actually can. Can start to change their neurological output, and the neurological output, it can start to drive fight or flight. You know, when fight or flight is that like, adrenaline type of feeling where maybe you're tired but you're still wired because your nervous systems ramped up. And unfortunately, when the nervous systems in this fight or flight, it is not sending the signals to heal. And so use your mind is really about understanding that. We're not saying it's in the mind. We're saying the mind is a powerful ally and your tool and a tool that actually is free. We have all of these things that we need to do that cost money, and then we have one of our most powerful tools, and it's free to use. And so the book is full of a lot of the physical things we do for these treatments, the supplement protocols, the lab testing, all of those kind of things. But it's also full of a bunch of the research and studies that have really shown what we can do from a, like, retraining the mind to be living with these diseases, but being out of fight or flight and being more in the part of our nervous system that, you know, we know in medicine as parasympathetic. It's sometimes called rest and digest, but it's the part of the nervous system that really sends that signal to the rest of the body that says heal, repair. Yeah. And in using these techniques, we're working to actually rewire the brain. Brain to, as we go through treatment, to be sending the signal of healing instead of sending the signal of breakdown and you know, and be revved up and basically not heal because that's not the signals we're sending.

Oh, my gosh. That is so important right there. Like, that is the missing piece for a lot of people is they never get out of that fight or flight mode. And so their body continues this inflammatory cascade and all of. Of the cytokines and interleukins and all that stuff that keeps you inflamed and breaking down when you really want to heal and restore. So that is awesome. I love that you do that with your clients and people can read your book and figure out how to do this, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely right. It's called Survivor's Guide. So we talk in there anything about how to get lab tests that I actually do have. I don't include the lab tests themselves themselves in the book. I include a link to a webpage, which I did purposely because as we know in medicine, there's always like the next test. And I wanted the ability to update the book without having to go through fully releasing a new edit. So you'll see in the booklet certain things I guide people to. A webpage that I continue to. I've already updated, you know, since the book was released in May, because there's been a new test that's out on the market, and so I wanted to do that. So the book has. Has some information in it, and then a couple things that are like, go here because I can update this regularly as new stuff comes out. But then it goes through testing even beyond mime and mold, like other tests when you have these sorts of illnesses that you should be thinking about, because, like me, it's like so many other things that are common. Like, I had multiple gastrointestinal infections. I had small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. I had heavy metals. I had chronic viral infection. So, you know, oftentimes it's like I said, it's not root cause, it's root causes. So we go through all of those various things to consider for really holistic testing as well as specific treatments, and then how to even talk about the mind and the practices, but how to even talk to parents and family, like when you should be going on social media and using social media as support versus when social media can. Can like plague the mind and fill the mind with fear. And so all of these various topics are actually covered in the book how to interview a practitioner to know if they are, you know, a good practitioner for you. We cover all of these types of topics. So it's. It's kind of written as. As the survivors die to really look at all of these different aspects that we've seen in our clinic be very common questions that come up in, you know, in the chronic complex disease population.

Oh, that's so awesome. I love that. And then I would encourage everybody to read it, but then find that practitioner like yourself or your husband, because this is not an endeavor you can do on your own whatsoever. You know, I, I want women to realize that they need a guide. They need someone to help, help them through that. But the book is a great starting point to really help you understand what the journey is going to look like and get control of that mind piece that you're talking about. Because I think that is so essential so people can work with you all over the place. They don't have to live in Colorado, right?

Yeah, yeah, we do work with people all over the country and even all over the world right now. Some of our international people. The thing we always like international people to know is that the responsibility of finding the lab test and like where you can get lab tested, if you're in another country other than the States, you know, that's on you. But we will give you like the specific list of everything you need. And we have quite a few clients in Europe, couple in Asia, even in the Philippines. Philippines is the hardest access to test there is so unfortunately limited. But we are, as we are continuing to treat more and more on an international basis, starting to gather more of a, you know, put together more of a database to have a resource for people of testing centers we've seen to work. But for right now, that part, I'd like people to know that the actual finding that, you know, the testing center is, is largely on you. But because we can do so much via like shipping, you know, across the world, that's so easy at this point, we've really found that we can work with people all over the world.

Yeah, exactly. I know I have patients in Australia and it might take a while to get the test to them, but they get it.

Yes.

That's awesome. So where can my listeners find you and connect with you?

Yeah, so my clinic is called medicinewithheart.com and if you're a practitioner, I also have an online training program where we teach people how to treat these complex, complicated, complicated diseases. And that can be found@mindbody Functional Medicine.com.

That is so awesome that you went through all this. Now you're not only like healing other people, but you're training practitioners to have this, you know, complex thought process and go through and really figure out these root causes. I think that piece is missing still in some functional medicine training programs. You know, I, I mean, that's another important point for maybe some people to understand is not all functional medicine training is the same. Right. Just like not all family practice residency programs are of the equal caliber across the country. It's the same for functional medicine, integrative medicine. It really is dependent on the certification bodies. So if you feel like you're missing that piece, definitely connect with Dr. Diane but as someone looking for help, like, I would make sure they work with mold or lime on a regular basis. Wouldn't you say that's kind of important, that they're not just dabbling in it once in a while?

Yeah, I mean, if. If this is what's going on with you. Lyme and mold, they're really. They're so nuanced to treat, which is one of the reasons I'm glad you're. You also brought up, like, read the book. Book. Find a practitioner that's going to help you. Because there are so many details around, like treatment order. And some of that is dependent upon the certain combination of, you know, you could have four out of, you know, six labs present and findings, another person could have a different four. And that unique combination is actually going to make a difference as far as treatment order and the way supplements are arranged. And it's just a very difficult thing to. To put into context of a book. So. And that's why I do feel like you're absolutely right of working with somebody that knows these diseases, you know, inside and out and hasn't just read a book and decided they're going to start treating this, because these things are pretty complicated. And if done in the wrong order, people can have. Start releasing toxins before their body's ready to do that. And that can actually make people feel quite a bit worse. So it is really important in this area to be working with somebody that, you know, is qualified and has studied these illnesses in great depth.

Yeah, I would. I can't agree more. Like, I don't personally treat that stuff. I send it all on. So I love that I have you as a resource now. This is so good. So everybody needs to connect with you because everybody deserves to feel amazing. And it's possible. Like, I don't care how terrible you feel, wouldn't you say?

I'm so glad you said that. It's, you know, it can seem like it can feel impossible. It can feel impossible when every day wake, you know, you can wake up and you can feel so horrible. And some days where it's like depending upon the level of how you're feeling, it's like, you know, just making dinner or taking the kids to school or going to the office or even, you know, some people, it's so bad. It's like even just walking from the bed to the bathroom can be a feat. So it can seem impossible, but it's not impossible. The body just has the most amazing ability to heal. And what allows for that is being able to interpret the messages. And that's why, you know, working with somebody that's functional, that's holistic, that understands testing and root causes beyond the standard conventional test when it comes to complicated, you know, chronic situations is just so essential.

Yeah, I love it. Well, so good. Thank you so much for all your wisdom. This is awesome. And everybody needs to check you out. I'll have all the links in my show notes. So thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here, Dr. Tabitha. I'll be talking to you soon. All right.

I hope you got so much out of that episode. And I want you to take away one golden little nugget for the week that you can start incorporating and adding to what you've been doing. And for me, it was getting out of that sympathetic, fight or flight mode that your nervous system is in. I think that we're in it so much that it starts to feel normal. And it's not. It's not a healthy place to be physically for our physiology because it's always in a catabolic, breakdown, destructive, inflammatory, inflammation type mode, as opposed to the parasympathetic, restore, digest, repair mode of healing. So I would really encourage you guys to get control of that brain of yours because the cool thing is we have the ability to shift out of sympathetic drive even though it happens automatically. That's called the autonomic nervous system because it is something that happens without your awareness. Your body just does this. You do have the ability to override and shift out of it. So it's like a downshift on your car. Like if you got to go up a really big hill or something, you have the ability to shift downward even though you have maybe an automatic transmission. So. So I would love for you to read Dr. Diane's book or focus on, like, what can I do to get control of my monkey mind and all the stress that I'm dealing with. And sometimes it's easy as doing guided meditations, breath work. I have so many good episodes on all of this stuff. So I hope you're listening to, like, all my episodes because they all tie into one another other. And I just think that, you know, this is a journey, it's not a sprint. And so the more tools we can get in our toolbox, the better off that we are going to be to be able to handle all of this stuff. So if you are feeling at all like I'm doing all the right things, the right things are I've changed my diet, I eat clean, I got rid of my inflammation. Inflammation. I'M not addicted to sugar anymore. My gut is healed. I'm sleep, I'm trying to sleep at night. I'm like putting my phone away and not watching TV and you know, exercising or walking every day I'm meditating. Those are all the things, right? The typical things that we talk about. If you're doing all those things and you are still struggling, then I would reach out to, to Dr. Diane without, you know, question, like hop on that train and, you know, go get checked out because it's more common than you think, honestly. And so I would love for you to have a breakthrough if you're struggling. So definitely check her out. Reach out to me. You know, we can deal with so many things. I don't do lime and mold myself, myself. But sometimes, you know, we'll diagnose it and move you on to people like Dr. Diane. But I am here for you. So don't hesitate to reach out. Shoot me your questions, your comments. I want to know what you guys are, you know, struggling with, what you want help with. Because I do this for you. And so please, you know, get me any ideas because I want this to be worth your time. I don't want you to just like, oh, that was a waste of an hour.

Right?

So let me know what you need from me. And if you do want to work one on one with me to reclaim your health, I would be super honored. You just go to drtabitha.com it's D R T A B A T H a dot com, three A's, no eyes. And let's like get you feeling amazing again. Okay? So go do something amazing. Lift another woman up in your life and go have a kick ass week. Bye, ladies.