New Blood Test for ME:CFS. Is It a Big Deal? with Evan H. Hirsch, MD

New Blood Test for ME:CFS. Is It a Big Deal? with Evan H. Hirsch, MD

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So there's a new blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome. Is it a big deal? Well, yes and no. And I think you deserve the honest answer, not the headline. So in today's video, I'm going to break down exactly what this new test found, what it cannot do. And based on what I've seen working with real people recovering from long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME CFS,

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why no single test is ever going to be what gets your life back. So welcome back to the energy empty podcast where we help you resolve your long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. I'm Evan Hirsch and I've worked with people who've spent five, seven, even 10 years being dismissed by conventional medicine before they found their way to real answers. You know, when I saw this research come out, I knew I had to bring it to you immediately. It's just been out in the last week.

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because it validates what those of us in functional environmental medicine have been saying for years. But I also want to be honest about what it doesn't tell us because that part matters just as much. So let's be fair to the science first. So this test uses a platform called epi switch. It analyzes 200 epigenetic markers from a standard blood draw and can identify ME CFS patients from health controls with 96 % accuracy. Pretty cool.

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So epigenetics is simply the science of how your environment switches your genes on and off without changing your actual DNA. So if you think of your DNA as like the hardware of the computer, the epigenetics is the software, things like toxins, infections, mold, chronic stress, it all changes that software. And epiSwitch is reading those changes to find a measurable fingerprint of ME-CFS in the blood. So the markers cluster around cytokine signaling.

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So particularly interleukin-2, which is a key messenger involved in regulating inflammation and immune response. And this finding doesn't stand alone. So there is a separate study from the Helmholtz Center, which just identified a specific dysfunctional immune cell. They're calling it the LCMO, found predominantly in long COVID patients.

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So LC mode levels directly correlate with fatigue and symptom severity. So two completely independent research teams converging on the same conclusion that there is a real measurable biologic immune disruption happening in ME CFS and long COVID patients. So this is big, you know, this validation matters enormously. You know, your suffering has always been real if you're one of those people. And now there is a fingerprint.

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for it in a blood test. But, this is a big but, knowing the immune system is dysregulated is not the same thing as knowing why. And the why is everything, because you can't really fix it until you know the why. So here's what the headlines are leaving out and what I think you really need to hear. So first, this test is not clinically available yet. It's still in validation. You cannot call your doctor tomorrow and ask for it. That day may be coming, but it's not here today.

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Second, a negative result does not mean you are well. Okay, so this is really important. So this test looks for one specific pattern across 200 markers. So your illness may involve a different or overlapping biological signature. So ME-CFS and long COVID are not one single disease. They are a cluster of overlapping dysfunctions that express differently in different people depending on their toxic history, infection history, and nervous system state. Okay.

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So plainly said, you know, if this test were available right now and you tested negative, that would not mean that nothing is wrong. It would mean that this particular snapshot didn't catch your pattern and you still need help. A negative result with when you still have real debilitating symptoms still warrants a thorough investigation and you still need help. You know, part of my story was that I did not, I would, did not qualify for a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. I had brain fog and body pain.

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and really bad exhaustion and post-exertional malaise, but I didn't have sleep issues, so I didn't qualify. And so just because you don't have a diagnosis doesn't mean you don't need help. So, and it's, it's also really important to note, you know, that this test tells you it, you know, it tells you something's wrong, but it doesn't tell you why, like I mentioned. So the analogy I like to use with clients is that like, imagine your house has like a terrible mold smell.

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and you feel sick every time you're inside of it. Someone runs a test and confirms, yes, you're reacting to something toxic in your house. That confirmation is validating and it's important, but it doesn't tell you where the mold is, how to remove it, or what else in the house might be making you sick, right? You still have to do the investigation. You still have to do the work. Or another example is oftentimes with people who are, who are working from the chronic inflammatory response syndrome marker, the CIRS mark, um, uh

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syndrome where essentially they're looking for inflammatory markers that may or may not indicate mold or other biotoxins. So if they're inflamed or they're, if you're increased like C4A or TGF beta, like those are indicating, yes, there's a problem, but it doesn't say specifically that it's mold, right? So there are other causes that can potentially be causing that. So this epiSwitch test is a landmark, but it's not a map to recovery. Okay.

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So what I have seen that has really driven recovery is that from working, you know, doing this work over the last decade is that every person that I've worked with who has genuinely recovered significantly from long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome addressed what I call the toxic five. So this is not necessarily because every test came back with a clean, positive, definitive result, but because we systematically investigated and addressed all five. Okay. So the tests.

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unfortunately are imperfect. You know, if you're doing urine tests to look at heavy metals and chemicals and molds, or if you're looking at serology tests to look at the immune system's reaction to infections, they are highly imperfect. They are not always going to give you an accurate response. And if you're relying on that test and the test does not tell you that something is present and your doctor is relying on that test for to determine treatment, you're not going to treat anything that doesn't come back on a laboratory test. Right. And so I've been fooled.

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numerous times before over the last decade from these imperfect tests where I haven't addressed something and then months down the line I've been like What's going on here? Repeat the test and then all of sudden the test is positive or just go ahead and treat the person and they get significantly better Okay, so there is no such thing as a perfect laboratory test, which is why taking action and addressing the toxic five

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is so important and not addressing all of them is one of the most common reasons why people stay sick. Let's talk about the toxic five. So the first one is heavy metals. So we're talking about mercury, lead, arsenic, and others accumulate over a lifetime and directly impair mitochondrial function, which produces 70 to 90 % of our energy and immune system regulation. So standard blood testing often misses, almost always will miss chronic heavy metal burden entirely. So

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You need to do a provoked urine test or sometimes red blood cell mineral panels to see it clearly. But like I mentioned, I've had clients with no obvious exposure history who came back with significant toxic metal burden, or we do a urine test and we know that they had a significant history and nothing shows up, right? Until months later, years later. But when you do, when you go through a process where you're removing metals, all of a sudden they get better.

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So the second one, let's talk about chemicals. So pesticides, plastics, solvents, flame retardants, these are everywhere, right? They disrupt hormone signaling, mitochondrial function, immune system response, and most doctors never even test these. And if they do test them, they're doing the wrong tests, right? These are perfect tests. And consequently, these people never get treated.

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Next, let's talk about mold. So mycotoxin or mold toxin exposure from water damage buildings is one of the most under-diagnosed root causes that I see. It drives the kind of cytokine dysregulation and neurological and neuroinflammation that the new blood test is now measuring. So standard allergy testing is not going to find it. When even when you look at the the specific mycotoxin urine test, it's the same thing that I mentioned. These urine tests really are tests of excretion.

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They tell you about your ability to get rid of these toxins out of your body, but they don't tell you your total body burden. Okay. So if they don't show up, you're not going to get treated and consequently, you're not going to get all the way better. Uh, the next one is infections. know, whether it's Epstein-Barr virus, HHV six chronic Lyme, other stealth infections, spike protein COVID. These all keep the immune system locked in a permanent alarm state.

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standard antibody titers are notoriously unreliable for these. They're looking at the immune system's reaction to a particular infection. And if your immune system is dysfunctional because you have the toxic five, you're not going to get an accurate read. So then you're asking any dysfunctional part of the body to give you an accurate test, right? I mean, I've had clients with completely normal Epstein-Barr virus panels who respond dramatically to targeted antiviral support. And part of it is also because there are

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thousands of different infections. And when you're using herbs like we are, you know, everything we do is natural. We operate online as, as a health coach or I do as a health coach. And we do that because we're using natural products. Once I figured out that these natural products were just as potent as the prescription ones. And now I can help people across state and national lines. So we can work with you wherever you are. But when you're using these herbs.

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you're going to have a lot more success because you may test for Epstein-Barr or HHV-6 or some of these other infections. And there are so many different species. And so if you're not testing for the right species, you, you're not going to be finding it on the laboratory test, but when you treat and you leave no stone unturned and you address all of the infections that are present and you're using herbs that do double and triple duty to make sure that you're addressing all of these subspecies within.

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each of those infection types, you're just going to be that much more successful. Okay. Um, so number five, the fifth of the toxic five is nervous system dysfunction. So the autonomic nervous system, the one that governs governs your fight, flight or freeze response gets locked in a chronic threat state in chronic fatigue syndrome and long COVID. And there's brand new research published this month that shows that 57 % of long COVID patients

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have measurable exercise induced dysautonomia and 10 % of those have POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. So this is not a psychological problem. It is a physiological rewiring that has to be directly addressed. And we have a nervous system retraining component to our program uh with both top-down mindset work and then bottom-up uh breath work and other nervous system retraining techniques in addition to doing vagus nerve stimulation.

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uh And we find that to be incredibly supportive so that we're addressing all of the underlying root causes. These are 99 % of all those causes so that we leave no stone unturned. Okay. So here is the important thing to remember. So in my clinical experience, the people who recover are not the ones with the cleanest, most definitive positive laboratory tests, right? They are the ones who commit to addressing all five of the toxic five systematically, regardless of what the tests show.

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Okay. Because these tests are imperfect, you know, I've never had a client where every single test lit up like a Christmas tree. just doesn't happen. But when we work through these five root causes together over time, the pattern of recovery is remarkably consistent. And that is not, or I should say that is what the new blood test cannot give you. Right. But it is what a real root cause approach can. Okay. So practically here's what I want you to take away first.

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We do need to celebrate the science. Okay. This blood test is a genuine landmark for legitimacy. Screenshot it, share it with the family member who still doesn't believe you, right? Show it to your doctor. It's, it's, it's really important. You know, the more people that can get diagnoses, the more people can get recognized, more people get told that it's not in your head, right? Which really

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really gets me very upset because you are traumatizing people for the doctors who are listening to this. are traumatizing people when you tell them that it's in their head. Okay. Yes, there's always a psychological component. Yes, there's nervous system dysfunction component to this, but there is always a physiological component. is physical, there's a mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, energetic components to all disease, especially with ones that are chronic, like long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome. Okay.

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Second, do not wait for this test or any test to start moving toward recovery. The root causes driving your immune dysfunction are addressable right now with the right clinical framework. Third, ask yourself honestly, have you ever actually worked through all five of these root causes systematically and thoroughly, right? Not just run a panel and move on if it came back as normal, but generally addressed the heavy metals, the chemicals, the molds, the infections, and the nervous system dysfunction one by one and then all at the same time.

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regardless of what the test showed. Because that is the difference between the people who stay stuck and the people who recover in my experience in doing this over the last decade. The longer that I do this work, the less that I test. So if this resonates with you, if you're tired of chasing labs and being told everything looks normal while you feel anything but normal, I want to invite you to my free masterclass where I walk you through exactly how I approach this with my clients.

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what the toxic five looks like in real people, how I identify which ones are driving each person's illness and what a real recovered framework looks like in practice. You can go to energymdmethod.com slash masterclass and, and watch the masterclass there. I'll also drop the link in the description below and I'd love to hear from you. You know, which of you have addressed, um, the, all of the five root causes, the toxic five and which ones have you addressed?

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Um, you know, have your labs all come back normal while you're still struggling, you know, tell me your story. You know, I'm going to read every single comment. might take me a little bit to get to them, but I will read and respond to every comment. You know, there are millions of people still being told that this illness is not real. This research says otherwise, which is exciting and everybody needs to know. So if you know somebody in your life who's struggling with long COVID chronic fatigue syndrome or really weird symptoms that they can't explain.

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please click the share button and share it with them. It could possibly change their life and I would really appreciate it. Okay. So thank you so much for being here today and I'll see you in the next episode.