(As part of a good medicine series interspersed in our usual blogs, these blogs explain how your provider handles your care with more than just what facts they know.)
One of the last things I want to diagnose someone with is mold toxicity- unless they really have it. Just like a brain surgeon who wants to make sure his patients really do need his service, I don’t want to put someone through mold detox and home remediation unless I am confident in the diagnosis. I also don’t want to blame mold toxicity for a symptom or condition it didn’t cause. Even those dealing with mold toxicity may have other comorbidities that are more common with mold or can have the normal run of the mill conditions that anyone may suffer from.
Again, comparing the process to a brain surgeon, you would not go directly to see a brain surgeon the first morning you wake up with a headache. Starting with someone who can work through the more common causes of head pain makes far more sense. Your primary care provider or even a neurologist will be more useful than the brain surgeon.
Likewise, if you have a chronic and unexplained illness for which you want a root cause analysis, come to a functional medicine provider that always starts from the beginning without blaming everything on mold or whatever their favorite diagnostic fad is. While Sanctuary Functional Medicine has cared for hundreds of mold toxic patients, we have also cared for countless with other conditions beside mold.
In fact, most mold patients (nearly 100%) have other conditions that travel with mold toxicity. If you see a provider in person or on-line (as some services offer now) that tells you fixing mold toxicity is the only thing you need, you should double check with someone else. Even if you are the rare one who caught mold toxicity so early that you don’t have other conditions like yeast overgrowth, nutrient deficiencies, or mast cell hyperactivity, you will need more support than just a binder in order to fully recover.
For those providers who blame everything on mold, what happens when you continue to be ill despite their single therapy answer? They may not know what to do next. Find someone who not only knows mold but also knows when it’s not mold- somebody who knows how to fix those other problems too.
In helping patients restore healthier, more abundant lives, we at Sanctuary Functional Medicine work to cover all the possibilities and not just blame everything on mold toxicity any more than we would blame everything on EBV or yeast. Single-issue medicine is not the good medicine we want to practice day in and day out.
Dr. Potter IFMCP
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
Dr. Eric Potter graduated from Vanderbilt Medical School and then went on to specialize in internal medicine (adult) and pediatric care, spending significant time and effort in growing his medical understanding while caring for patients from all walks of life.
