Most biotoxic illnesses are difficult to diagnose and treat as all of them, including mold, affect multiple systems in your body and produce a wide array of symptoms.
However, there is an underlying commonality, whether your disease is caused by dinoflagellates, mold, or spirochetes, for example, and that is chronic inflammation. The toxins produced by these microorganisms cause your innate immune system to respond to the foreign antigens, and the inflammation induced by exposure to the toxin is what wreaks havoc on your health.
"In order to treat them, we need to both remove them from exposure and remove toxin from their body," Dr. Shoemaker says.
One of the complicating factors in terms of diagnosis is the fact that symptoms don't necessarily remain static. They can vary from day to day, as the offending compounds affect multiple body systems; each capable of causing multiple symptoms.
According to Dr. Shoemaker:
"The similarity to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, for example, is uncanny," he says. "It turns out the idea of a biotoxin really expands to apply to all the compounds that have similar structure, shape, and size. These compounds are called ionophores, which means they move from cell to cell without being carried in the bloodstream.
They're hard to detect and certainly hard to eliminate. Self-healing is extremely rare.
But eventually, whether the toxin comes from a dinoflagellate, from a mold, whether it comes from a blue-green algae, a spirochete, an apicomplexan, or series of other sources of these illnesses, these compounds – these small and low molecular weight compounds – all end up being dumped in the bile by your liver. Your liver can't metabolize these things."
According to Dr. Shoemaker:
"The inflammation that we see in these patients responds poorly to hygienic measures (such as diet and exercise). But certainly, we want to maximize a healthful living as best as we can...
Exercise is interesting. Just about everybody who has this illness know all about "push-crash" or good days followed by crash days. That common phenomenon is actually due to a very low anaerobic threshold.
If they try to use exercise and do too much, they will very quickly outstrip the delivery of oxygen to mitochondria. So, while this disorder is not a mitochondrial primary disorder, it becomes a secondary mitochondrial problem. We want to let them exercise to the anaerobic threshold, but not beyond. Because if they go beyond, they will start burning protein first after they've wasted glycogen due to anaerobic activity."
... this is important, because if you try to give someone with capillary hypoperfusion, low anaerobic threshold, and low VO2 max, which these illnesses all have; if you put them on an intense exercise program, you will sicken them immediately. You will make them much, much worse. Remember, these people are often short of breath going up four and five steps.
We can use exercise as therapeutic protocol over time. And as exercise matches anaerobic threshold or oxygen delivery, we can make them into some of the most vigorous exercises anyone's seen, but you can't start that way."For more information, SurvivingMold.com is a great resource for medical practitioners and patients alike.
Sources:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/22/mold-and-other-chronic-diseases.aspx
