Why “Your Labs Are Normal” But You Still Feel Awful - Dr Gabrielle Lyon

You had two original pillars of health, which were eat and exercise, but then you had to add a third one. How come-

I did. The third one, uh, was environment and is environment. I... Do you have time for a quick story?

Yeah, yeah.

I graduated medical school obviously, and then did my fellowship, and when you finish your fellowship and go into private practice, you kind of think you know everything. And I was convinced the key to health was diet and exercise. It was all lifestyle. And I was wrong. I had this patient, very successful patient, CEO of a major company. She was female, uh, she was doing everything she was supposed to, diet and exercise-wise, and she was feeling terrible and also gaining weight. I said, "No, no, no, it's definitely diet and exercise." And in fact, a handful of years later, I had to call and apologize because it wasn't just diet and exercise. She had significant exposures that really affected her health and wellness, and I think these exposures affect a lot of people and, um, you know, at the time when I was beginning my practice, it wasn't common, and we weren't even thinking about it.

So, is it getting more common? It- it- the w- talk of complex illness caused by mold, gut health, BPAs, heavy metals, Lyme, parasites, like, this-

No, microplastics.

... whatever this world is seems to be kind of gaining speed. Is this because more people are getting it or because we are detecting it more, uh, effectively? What- what do you think is going on there?

It's both. We have more exposures than arguably we've ever had now with microplastics and we are getting better at acknowledging and detecting it, but we're still not there. So for example, mold. Mold exposure, this is, we hear a lot about it now in terms of buildings with mold or locations and this musty smell, and oftentimes we think that it, it really doesn't affect people. However, there are certain people that will move into these buildings, walk in there, break out in a rash, have brain fog, fatigue, feel terrible, and it's this exposure to mold mycotoxins. But the reality is, for a testing perspective, we don't have validated tests for mold. However, I- I think it's really important that we test for it, but it's not like you walk in and you do a- a blood glucose test and there's this diagnosis of diabetes.

Mm.

Cut and dry. We don't have that.

Well, no we don't. Well, you do get stuff like the total tox test. Now obviously, um, sort of peering under the skirt of what my last two years has been like, this is a- a topic of particular interest to me because this is what I've been battling through, but since releasing the health log thing that I did a couple of weeks ago, or a couple of months ago now I guess, the number of people that reach out and say, "I lived in a house that had mold," or, "I had parasites," or, "I had, I'm dealing with Lyme," or, "I'm dealing with leaky gut," or, "I had, you know, fucking H. pylori," whatever, um, this, yeah, like multisystem challenge, um, it really is kind of like a silent epidemic, and it doesn't matter which angle you come into it at. Um, but yeah, as you say, uh, uh, d- you can say you are a m- mold person, like you have been in a house with mold, but you can do stuff like a total tox test, right, which comes back and you can see, wow, those numbers were right off the chart. Um, but yeah, I- I, the main sort of takeaway, I think, that I've learned from the last couple of years is how many people are living a life that they thought was just getting older or-