The Most Important Mold Test to Get When You Have Fatigue with Evan H. Hirsch, MD - #117

The Most Important Mold Test to Get When You Have Fatigue with Evan H. Hirsch, MD

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Hey there, Evan Hirsch here. Welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, ME-CFS and long COVID so that you can get back to living the life that you want to live. So really excited about today's episode because I'm going to be talking about the number one most important mold test that you can get if you have fatigue and other symptoms that you think are mold related.

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So this could be brain fog, chronic fatigue, body pain, neuropathies like numbness and tingling, shooting pains that move around the body, internal vibrations, that's a big one that a lot of people don't realize is mold related. So the test is called an EMMA test. So this is the environmental mold and mycotoxin assay. And you can find it through our store at energymdmethod.com slash EMMA, which is E-M-M-A.

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And I will also drop that link around this video. So the reason why I like that test best, well, I rhymed. The reason why I like that test best is because that test is a combination of looking at mold spores, so the actual mold itself and the spores that are being produced versus the, and it also tests for the mycotoxins. So these are the toxins produced by the mold to.

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attack others and generally when it thinks it's under attack it's going to produce these. So both of those need to be tested in order to determine whether or not there is mold in a particular space. Okay and this is also the most important test that I recommend that people get of any of the tests that we recommend in our program. Okay because the reason why is because knowing whether or not you are living in a moldy environment is that important. Okay.

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You know, you've heard me probably talk before about the toxic five, the heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and trauma or nervous system dysfunction that are at the root of chronic fatigue, ME, CFS, long COVID, as well as MCAS or mast cell activation syndrome. So knowing that the toxic five are at the root, you may be asking, well, what about the test for heavy metals or for chemicals, or what about testing for infections, this, that, and the other thing?

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So I've been doing this work for about a decade, about 10 years. And what I found after doing lots of testing, every three months I would do testing on people and I would test all of these things. And what I found out is that after 12 months of working with people, all of these toxins came out at some point, the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, they all came out at some point in the process, okay? So I don't really test for those anymore in the body. We still can do that.

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But when you have ME-CFS or you have these symptoms of brain fog and chronic fatigue and body pain and sleep issues, you cannot get there without having all of these individual, all these different causes, right? This is a combination of causes that are bound together that as you start to release these, then you start to find them in the urine, okay? And the testing for heavy metals,

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and for chemicals and for molds and even for infections are oftentimes urine tests. And you're looking at more of what you're excreting versus the total body burden, right? So based on how your body is able to get rid of these toxins is really going to determine whether more of these show up in your body, right? So when you start, when people start off our program and their drainage or their detox pathways are clogged, if you were to do all that testing at that moment,

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you may not find much in the urine. This is why a lot of people, why there is a controversy and why some people, some practitioners say that those urine tests don't work. It's because if your pathways are not open, if you're not excreting out of your kidneys, you are not going to be able to collect things and find something in the urine. But what I found after repeating tests on people over the years, over the past decade, is that when you hit month six or seven or eight or nine, around that time,

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all of a sudden you are, the pathways are open and you're excreting out a whole bunch of these toxins. And so if you test at that time, you're going to find a lot of toxins that are being produced. So some people might be questioning at that point in time, if they're going through a process, they're like, why do my labs look worse? Why do I have more mycotoxins or chemicals or heavy metals coming out of my body? And the reality is, is that it doesn't look worse. It's just that you're excreting more.

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So that's a really important point to keep in mind. So for all of those tests, right? I said that I don't really test anymore because I know that we have to address all those. And I know that if we address every single cause that we're gonna be successful. That we, as long as we are leaving no stone unturned, that we are going to be successful, right? And we also know that all of our tests are imperfect. Whether it's a urine test or a serology test, the immune, which is looking at the immune system's reaction.

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to infections or to molds, et cetera. If you're looking at indirect markers that are trying to tell you whether or not you have mycotoxins, mold illness, et cetera, you're not going to potentially find success because all of those tests are imperfect. So if you get a test that tells you, no, you don't have one of these causes, and then you don't address one of these causes, and then you go through a program and 12 months later, you're looking back and you're saying, why am I not better?

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Right? It's because you haven't addressed all those causes. So what I found is that we address all of the causes. Now, what is one of the things that we really have to look at? We have to look at your environment. We have to look at whether or not you're living in mold. Are you drinking toxic water? What does the air look like that you're breathing? What is the food that you're consuming? Right? So these are all really important, but the most important thing that I have found that a lot of people are not addressing is whether or not you're living in a moldy environment.

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So sometimes it just takes a little bit of your HVAC system that you can send off for the EMA test, or you can take a sample from a certain part of your room, a dust sample, and send it off to know whether or not you have mold in your home. So really important because when you are living in a moldy place, you may not know it. And you may have mold in your body from living in a place

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that at some point in its history had a busted pipe or a roof leak or a flood in the basement or some sort of water damage. So if in the history of a particular home since its inception had any sort of water damage and you at some point in the life of that home lived in that home, potentially you had mold in your body. Could have been when you were

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zero years old or five years old, or it could have been last year. Sometimes you move into a place and that becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back and then you know, it's highly likely that it was the place you moved into. But oftentimes it is this accumulation over time, you know, we come out of the womb already having toxins in our bodies, right? There have been tests to show that over 300 different chemicals are found in baby's cord blood in the placenta, right that we get from mom, and then things accumulate.

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You know, part of my story, as you may have heard it before, is that I consumed a lot of tuna fish growing up. Well, that's a lot of mercury. I had mercury fillings. I was chronically constipated so I couldn't get toxins out of my body. I would poop like once a week for the first 25 years of my life because I was eating a lot of gluten and dairy. Right. And then I had different exposures along the way. Lived in places that had mold, kissed people that had different infections, had significant stressors in my life, going through medical school and residency.

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got formaldehyde poisoning from a gross anatomy lab, and these chemicals and these toxins just kept accumulating in my body until my body called it quits when I was trying to run my practice and I ended up with chronic fatigue. So that's generally the process that it takes. So it's really important to understand, are you living in a moldy environment? Because if you are, we have to remediate that environment. We have to, you know, potentially

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Get some air filters in there, fogging the place, potentially move. It really depends on how bad it is, but don't get overwhelmed by that part of the process. The most important thing is to check and to determine because if you don't know whether or not you're living in a moldy environment, you cannot get well. Okay. So I hope that was helpful for you. Check out energymdmethod.com slash E-M-M-A, Emma. And you can go ahead and order that right now.

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and get the results. And if they are positive, it's showing that there's any microtoxins or mold, then you know that that may be an issue for you. So if you have chronic fatigue, long COVID, or mast cell activation syndrome, and you're looking for help, check us out at energymdmethod.com. We have a program for almost every single budget, and we're here to help.