Its Not Lyme, It’s Mold

Posted On 01/13/2019 By admin

I recently listened to a Podcast hosted by Dave Asprey entitled “Its not Lyme, Its Mold”. The title is catchy, no doubt, but the content is even more interesting.

Click here for Audio Podcast link

In this Podcast, Dr. Andrew Heyman hones in on the dangers of Mold, the way it mimics Lyme Disease symptoms and most importantly – what you can do to heal. There is new testing available that Andrew also discusses. Important findings from Andrew are quoted below.

40 million people, at least half of all buildings in the US have a mold problem. This burden to people translates to garden- variety depression, weight gain, fatigue.

A few important highlights (quoted from Dr. Andrew Heyman)

We measured by volume different areas of the brain and what we found is that against our hypothesis, that sure enough the brain was damaged from the inflammation for mold and Lyme but the injury pattern was different between the two.

The first was when you listen to people who are sick from Lyme and mold. They almost always talk about cognitive issues, the brain fog, the word finding difficulties, the memory loss. We started scanning people’s brains and in particular, looked for areas of the brain that might appear to be injured. These brain scans are called “NeuroQuant” brain scans.

We measured by volume different areas of the brain and what he found is that the brain was damaged from the inflammation for mold and Lyme but the injury pattern was different between the two.

We found some of the answer in the NeuroQuant because this is literally brain damage that’s occurring because of the inflammation.

That has to become a feature of the treatment as well. That these patients will not get better. Even if you remove the mold, even if you treat the Lyme, even if you turn off the inflammation, they are left with damaged brains. That has to be managed too.

You got to protect the brain but when we saw the differences in the brain scan between Lyme and mold, we asked the question why? That led us to taking the deep dive down to people’s genes and that’s where we found the magic. That is to say, it turns out that there are certain groups of genes that turn on like light switches when a person is exposed to Lyme and mold and they tell the body to make inflammation.

These genes won’t turn off on their own, even if you remove them from the mold, even if you treat the Lyme. These people can remain sick for months and years, for the rest of their life.

It’s a journey and it turns out that it’s different sets of genes that are ignited between Lyme and mold. We can now tell the difference between the two groups, even though the symptoms are the same.

At least in our data set we’ve looked at 6,000 patients now that we track formally. 80% of them are from water-damaged buildings.

What is a Nanostring Test?

We know this now based on the research that we’ve done but also because we have a definitive answer in the new nanostring tests that we developed.

In the new world of Omex, there’s a chain of events that occur from the DNA to the RNA. DNA makes RNA and RNA makes proteins and then proteins make small molecules. That’s the linkage between genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. What we do is we look at the RNA that’s being made off DNA. That’s transcriptomics. That tells us which genes are on and which are off.

What we did is we originally isolated 2000 genes that we thought were candidates for abnormal reactions to mold and Lyme. We then isolated to 900 and at that level, especially within the mitochondria, which turns out there is overlap with inflammatory pathways, 500 extra genes were turned on inappropriately for Lyme patients. 700 extra genes were turned on for mold patients but they were different groups.

It’s almost like instruments in a symphony, where certain instruments need to play at a certain time and you get melody and harmony and the cell knows what to do but when all the instruments are playing at once, it’s chaos. The cell metabolism that results is incredibly impaired. Mitochondrial output is incredibly impaired and people are tired as a result.

A nanostring then is a subset of the 900. We now have isolated 215 genes that are high candidates in terms of reaction to mold and Lyme. We can now tell within the 215 … Is it a mold exposure because certain genes turn on? We can tell Lyme. We can even tell post Lyme. That in fact if a person had treated Lyme, a different set of genes ignite but they remain sick and now we even discovered pathways related to what we call hypometabolism. The cell goes into a hibernation state. There are five genes as part of hypometabolism that are part and parcel to the … What’s called the mTOR pathway, which is the aging pathway. Those get injured so people gain weight. Their mitochondria become inefficient and this is likely the setup potentially even for cancer. Because that’s the metabolic profile of a cancer cell, which is poor ATP output and impaired mitochondria. If you look at what mycotoxins, these mold toxins do to mitochondria, they absolutely do exactly those things.

Moving from a Moldy Building to Get Well

If you take your stuff with you when you move from a mold environment, it doesn’t matter. You are still in a moldy environment. Even your paperwork that has mold on it has to go. I still have a sealed box of paperwork. I only open it outdoors because it’s full of crap from 20 years ago but that is a real thing. Paper is the enemy. There’s a few things that I find can be really helpful for people that are natural and it all gets back to really the gut brain connection. What do I do for the brain? I cheat a little bit. As an MD, I write the prescription for the Rg3 nicotinamide. That’s called Synapsin but again, we are moving towards, hopefully an over-the-counter version of that.

Lipids to Repair the Cell Membrane to Get Well

Then we start looking for other natural compounds and products that further turn off the fire in the brain. One of our mainstays, of course is lipids. The brain is mostly made up of healthy fat or it should be but those liquids become damaged. We certainly do a lot of phosphatidylcholine. That’s a core feature of what we do. You can take PC orally, acetylcholine. You can take it intravenously. Certainly, I like the phosphatidylcholine. I do oral and IV but they also need phosphatidylinositol and potential and phosphatidylethanolamine because those are phospholipids that are more important for the mitochondrial membrane. Phosphatidylcholine is better for the outer cell membrane.

The oral, typically you get all three. The IV is typically pure phosphatidylcholine. We have seen dramatic results in patients when they start turning over their lipid layer. I tell them they are doing an oil change and it’s the lipid content in the body that harbors the mycotoxins and you have to turn that around.

I mean when you look at just turning over of omega-3s for example, that takes almost a year but the phosphatidylcholine layer takes even longer (about 700 days).

I cannot get you better if I don’t turn over your cell membranes” because part of the abnormal signaling down to the genes is because of the abnormal lipids. One way we correct that abnormal gene response is correcting lipids. You have to do that.

They get a lot of bile congestion. One thing that I tell patients is that when your body makes inflammation and when you consume these abnormal lipids, they all are absorbed in the liver and they are emulsified in the bile and they get dissolved. It’s called saponification and then dumped into the digestive track. Your liver and your bile has to be flowing normally and the last thing you should be doing is putting in trans fats, saturated fats because that’s going to interfere. Specifically, trans odd saturated are what you want to avoid.

You’ve got to work on repairing the lipid … The blood brain barrier. Chia and flax, which are also nice at contributing to sealing up the membranes. We have had pretty good success with … As long as it’s pure. They have to grind it themselves.