I have had a few people email me and say, "Alright already, tell us the answer." I will attempt to do so in this post and the next. How can you learn if you have a mold related illness?
Based on everything I know now here is what I would do in this order:
1. Don't laugh, but measure the wingspan of your arms from fingertip to fingertip. If your wingspan is longer than you are tall you have a very high probability of having a genotype that is mold susceptible, especially if you are from Northern European descent.
2. Go HERE and take the online test. It costs $20 to take the initial test and is well worth it. On the VCS test DON'T guess. If you can't see the contrasts hit the "I don't know button." We all want to pass tests and we were taught to guess if we don't know the answer. That can mean you pass this test when you actually are sick. The VCS test works because the optic nerve goes directly into the brain. Mold toxins are neurotoxic and often affect the eyes first. A high score here is HIGHLY indicative that you are sick from mold exposure.
3. Get your genotype tested. The test is available two ways. First through your doc where you might get reimbursed by insurance, but you have to convince your doc to give you a test he knows little about. The test is available from LabCorp. The test is called an HLA test. The Test # is 012542. The DX codes for the test are 279.10, 377.34, 279.8. OR you can order your own test from here .
4. When you get your test results back refer to this document, Download HLA Test Results to figure out what your genotype is. The document has 2 pages. It can be a little complicated but you can figure it out. You can either have one or two bad alleles. When you translate it refer to the 2nd page of the document to see if your genotype is on the list. The 2 worst genotypes (Shoemakers "dreaded genotypes" are 4-3-53, 11(12)-3-52B. People with Chronic Lyme Disease tend to have 15-6-51 or 16-5-51.
5. While you are at it you might also want to test your VIP and MSH levels. Those are the two I would probably test as they will confirm that you are feeling bad because both of these powerful peptides are either very low or can't even be detected (as they were in me.) If you want to run all the tests and have a doc willing to work with you, this document Download New_Biotoxin_Lab_Order_List_rev3 lists ALL the tests that Dr. Shoemaker runs. And here is the document Download Lab result ranges that has the ranges that he looks for for all these tests.
6. Now keep in mind that most doctors won't know what most of the tests are since they have not commonly used them. But these are all tests that are commonly available from the Labs listed. Your insurance company won't recognize most of them either.
7. Find out where you are being exposed to mold. Thankfully you don't have to tear walls down etc to find mold. There is a great new test (ERMI, Environmental Relative Mold Index, developed by the EPA.) where a sample of dust is collected from your carpets, drapes and furniture. Information about this test is here and here. Now it is possible to buy this test online, collect the sample and send it to an ERMI lab yourself. I chose not to do this. The more I learned I felt that getting the test done right was more important than perhaps saving a few dollars. By googling "ERMI" and "Mold" you will find local mold companies. Be careful! Not all the companies found will even know what the ERMI test is much less know how to do it. You want to find someone who KNOWS the test, and uses it regularly. In Phoenix I have a good company that I work with and recommend. They did a great job, charged $500 and I could tell they really knew what they were doing. They also did a bit of remediation and used a process using concentrated Hydrogen Peroxide fog that hopefully killed what little mold my house did have. I have a vacation home in Flagstaff and could not find a mold company who knew about the ERMI test. But one of them knew a professor at NAU who managed all the buildings on campus who regularly used the ERMI test. I contacted him and for $600 I had the test done for that house. Thankfully it was VERY clean. I also had Jigsaw Health's office checked (pretty moldy!) and one of my daughters houses as well. (Also moldy)
8. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have a bad genotype, your children have a 1 in 4 chance of having that same gene. If you have two, they definitely have one or both of yours.
Next post I will tell you what you can do to begin to get well,