I would love some advice on my 15-year-old daughter’s health issues, which began 18 months ago. I will try to keep this as short as possible. Her main complaints are extreme bloating, exercise-induced asthma, and allergies to raw veggies, fruits, never had this before but now she gets an itchy throat and lips. Sneezes 20 times if she eats raw carrots, apples, sugar snap peas, peaches. and a few other things. She’s been seen by four MDs, finally have one we love, but she stopped. She eats a Paleo-type diet, exercises regularly, sleeps eight hours per night, regular meditation practice 10 minutes per day. Eighteen months ago she had a stool test that showed moderate growth of Citrobacter, elevated lysozyme, given oil of oregano, G.I. Microbe X. Blood test showed high fasting glucose 104, didn’t feel any relief. Did more testing. High sIgA, low acetate, a few nutrient deficiencies, put on probiotics, digestive enzymes, zinc, B12, vitamin D, Ultra Flemex, DAO, tried a low-histamine diet, no difference. Newest naturopath test showed for SIBO, negative treated her anyway with berberine biofilm disruptor. Around this time it was discovered that she had a cyst on her right breast. Surgically removed, we re-tested for SIBO a few months later, results were positive. Treated again using ADAPT protocol. She still didn’t see any relief. Stopped that, treated her with black cumin and argentine silver, did a third SIBO test, negative. Daughter doesn’t feel any better, has all the same symptoms. Definitely exposed to mold eighteen months ago at a gym where she was training. No longer goes there. Wonder if this is what started everything. The naturopath doesn’t think these are really symptoms that would result from mold exposure, but I wonder if we should still test for it. Another thought was to get an ultrasound to look for uterine cysts that she had on her breast.

Dr. Amy Nett:  Okay, okay. So the only thing I didn’t follow was getting an ultrasound to look for uterine cysts. Maybe you mean ovarian cysts. I’m not entirely clear, but I’m not sure that I would go looking for cysts. But I’m not sure that I would go looking for cysts. I’m not really sure that they need to be removed. Cysts might just be a response to an inflammation. So it sounds like what you’re describing is basically to some extent some mass cell activation syndrome. So some MCAS because you’re mentioning the itchy throat, sneezes and you know, certainly then the question is what’s the underlying cause. I certainly think chronic inflammatory response syndrome due to mold-related illness could be an underlying cause of MCAS, but probably not the only one. So it sounds like you’ve done all the gut testing that was normal. So I would also consider methylation testing. So I don’t know if you have access to a practitioner who could run a functional methylation test, do the HDRI functional methylation panel see if you would benefit from methylation support.

You might also just run 23andMe, which you can order yourself to get the methylation genetics. So do 23andMe, order that test, it’s a simple saliva test. And then go to GeneticGenie.org, run the methylation analysis, that will give you a genetic predisposition. If you want to test for chronic inflammatory response syndrome, you can go to Survivingmold.com or biotoxinillnessjourney.com, I believe. Those both have a lot of information about how to do mold testing. That’s probably where I would go next. The other thing to think about, could there be a heavy metal toxicity? I don’t know. But something else just to exclude because it seems like the gut issues aren’t resolving.

Let’s see here, yeah, that’s probably where I would start. So heavy metals test, functional methylation test, you can get the methylation genetics so the piece of that, but that won’t guide treatments specifically. And then blood markers for chronic inflammatory response syndrome. So again that would be like TGFB1, MSH, 4A is kind of hard to get right now, MMP9, 88 to osmolality and MSH if I didn’t already say that one, but I might have. And if those are positive, then Marquand’s nasal swab and then go down, find someone who’s comfortable working with the Shoemaker protocol and if that’s how you want to approach it. But I think that’s reasonable to go down a mold pathway and I wouldn’t chase the cysts right now.