Danny M says, "Do you have any experience with urinary mycotoxin testing,
for example, Great Plains Labs mycotoxin test for identifying mold exposure episode, have you seen a
high correlation between an elevated test results and actual mold exposure, or have you found other
explanations for elevated test results?" Well, I'll tell you when I was dealing with
severe household mold exposure, I did a Real Time mycotoxin test, which I don't know how that
is, differs from Great Plains, methodologically or whatever.
But there, I see someone is posting a response in the chat to the other question about Lauracidin.
So check out the chat, but Paula, you should, oh, I see you posted that there because I
archived the question. All right. So Paula says Lauricidin may help with herpes simplex.
Okay. Anyway, Danny M was asking if I have experience with urinary mycotoxin testing,
for example, Great Plains Labs for identifying mold exposure, and whether that correlates
with actual mold exposure, or if I've found other explanations for elevated test results.
So when I was dealing with a severe mold related illness, driven by
mold exposure in my apartment a few years ago, I didn't use the Great Plains test, I used the Real
Time mycotoxin test but it's testing the same set of mycotoxins. And I had the dust from my
apartment sampled, and I had my urine sampled. And meanwhile, I also had an inspector come and
just the inspector found visible black mold that was seeping out of my, where the tiles of the,
where the wall of the shower, bathtub meets the, the ledge of the bath tub. So in that corner,
black mold was seeping out of that joint. And he also pointed out, which I never noticed,
but was very obvious after he pointed out to me that if you turned and faced so that you were,
so that your eyesight was parallel to the wall, and then just turn slightly to look at the wall.
You could visibly see the wall bulging out, reflecting the mold growth inside the wall.
And, I developed a severe illness when I was sleeping on a couch on the other side of the wall.
And so he pointed out that sheet rock is porous enough for mycotoxins to go through.
And so one hypothesis was that there was an enormous amount of black mold inside that wall
that was just constantly seeping out into the living room, through that wall. On top of me while
I was sleeping on the couch or just onto the couch that I was sleeping in. But anyway, point being,
I had urinary mycotoxins that were elevated and I had mycotoxins that were elevated in the dust
of my apartment. And the dust mycotoxins were completely different from the urinary mycotoxins,
making it totally implausible that even though I had a severe mold, severe
symptomatic mold-induced illness caused by obvious visible mold contamination in my apartment,
there was still low correlation between the urinary mycotoxins and the apartment mycotoxins.
And so, I concluded that, whatever I spent, like at least $1,200, or if not $2000 or
whatever on those tests was totally useless. And honestly, it was much more significant
that I noticed that my brain fog went away when I was outside and not in my apartment.
And so I just, I think those urinary microtoxins that might be coming from
your apartment, but there's a good chance they're coming from your food.
Most people have urinary mycotoxins and it's from the food supply. It's probably not clinically
significant quite often. And so,
I'm not against testing it, but I just like, if finances are at all limiting,
it's not the top thing I would do, I would be much more interested in, do you have symptoms that are,
compatible with mold induced illness and do they go away when you spend
time away from the place that you think is contaminated with mold? The number one, hint,
number one is not even a hint. The number one red flag that you have,
environmental mold exposure is if you get out of the environment the symptoms go away.
So look at the price of a vacation and the price of the mycotoxins and
make a cost-benefit analysis. Just assume that the vacation will tell you as much as
the mycotoxin tests will tell you. So assume the benefit is the same
and the vacation has the added benefit of whatever you would value about being on vacation,
and then see how the cost lines up and decide what you'd rather do from a cost-benefit analysis.
Because actually, I don't assume that the benefit is the same. I assume you'll get more
information from taking a vacation, getting out of the potentially moldy, the putatively
moldy environment than you would get out of your urinary mycotoxin test, that's what I would say.
All right. Thank you, Danny M, for your question. I hope that helps.