Hello there,
Just thought I'd post to spread the word about this very handy test I've come across at vcstest.com. You can get a basic test for free, with further tests by donation. In itself, the test doesn't provide a diagnosis, but it's a very useful screening tool to see if you might have issues of biotoxin illness – relating to mold or Lyme for instance. The service is run by people who are really keen to help as many people struggling with chronic illness as possible – they know what it's like having been there personally.

By the way, I took the test myself last week and it came up with results that were actually better than for the average person. That was a surprise! But poorer scores in some areas did suggest that I am suffering from nutritional deficiencies – which wasn't a surprise! I did suspect that I have mold illness, but am wondering now whether it's more of an 'allergy' than a biotoxin problem. Not sure... Anyway, if you do happen to turn up a result suggestive of biotoxin problems, I'm thinking that can only be helpful to work out what you can do in the way of therapy/further investigation.

Hope you find useful. Be nice to hear how you get on and best wishes to all.

Thanks for posting this Hanna!

This is indeed a great online tool and I know a lot of environmental medicine doctors use it themselves when assessing their patients. I personally took the test a few years back and recorded a very high score - although unfortunately I don't remember what it was now. I suspected biotoxins were a large part of my illness as gut dysbiosis (Candida / yeast and SIBO) seem to have been passed down to both myself and my sister from our mum. This was only worsened by excessive (and negligent) over-prescribing of antibiotics - for ear and throat infections during early childhood for myself and other reasons for my sister, Lindsay.

We also lived in a house built on marshland (the estate actually named 'Tranmere Park') when we were growing up so there was potentially some damp and mould issues going on there. Myself, my sister, our mum and our next door neighbour all developed M.E. / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome around the same time while living there. It's information like this that should be giving researchers and doctors some direction but this important stuff that never gets to them or is dismissed as coincidence!

Anyway, back to the Visual Contrast Sensitivity Test - if anyone reading this takes the test and the results are suggestive of biotoxin-related illness I would highly recommend looking into The Detoxx Protocol developed by Patricia Kane, Ph.D and colleagues. They wrote versions of The Detoxx Book for both doctors and patients that details treatment based on aiding the binding of biotoxins in the gut and excretion in the stool to stop them being reabsorbed in a never-ending cycle of toxicity. They also focus a lot of general support of detoxification pathways in the body and the health of individual cells through correct balance of fats, particularly omega-6 and omega-3 as well as other vital lipids such as phosphatidyl choline (PC).

All the best with investigating your potential nutritional deficiencies and allergies / sensitivities Hanna and thanks again for posting the link to this important tool!

Hello there,
Thanks very much for this info and very interesting to hear about your family experience with CFS too. Will check out the Patricia Kane protocol, sounds good. I just have a question about the connection between gut dysbiosis and mold illness. I've heard about it many times, but I'm still puzzled as to why environmental mold can give you more problems with bad bugs in your gut. I mean, are they the same molds that we breathe in that end up living in our guts?! I'm genuinely confused here! I think Chinese medicine would describe it as a case of being 'invaded by the damp' i.e. environmental damp leads to more internal damp and therefore bad bugs. But I would also like a 'scientific' explanation as well to help me get my head round this. Any insights will be much appreciated!
Oh and other observation - when exposed to environmental mold or mold in food, I tend to get wind as a symptom. Could this be the mold continuing to grow and cause fermentation inside me, or is this more likely to be an allergic symptom I'm wondering?
Thanks again and best wishes,
Hanna

Good questions Hanna and your confusion is understandable. I'm not sure I have the level of microbiology and immunology knowledge to answer entirely correctly but I'm happy to offer my 'educated guesses'!

The most likely reason I can think of as to why people affected by environmental mold tend to develop Candida/yeast problems in the gut (and vice versa) is an immune deficiency when it comes to fighting off molds and fungi. This may be genetic or due to exposures etc. The main thing to keep in mind is that Candida and other gut yeast are all molds, like those in the environment, so if your immune system struggles to defend you against environmental molds it stands to reason it would also leave you susceptible to overgrowth of gut yeast like various Candida species.

Whether you have gut yeast overgrowth or environmental mold exposures first - either will weaken your ability to prevent the other becoming a problem for you. Essentially environmental molds expose you to toxins that impair immunity from the outside while gut dysbiosis does the same from the inside (leaving aside the confusing fact that the gut is 'technically' outside the body!).

Certainly some molds in food are able to establish themselves in the gut and cause fermentation and symptoms such as wind and bloating. There are documented cases of brewer's yeast used in beer getting a hold in patient's guts as one example. On the other hand mold food allergy/sensitivity or biogenic amine intolerance (histamine, tyramine etc - high in moldy foods like cheese) could also cause those same symptoms - and to confuse things further you could have gut dysbiosis, environmental mold sensitivity and food mold allergy-type reactions all going on at the same time. See this article for more about biogenic amine intolerance.

The cheap way to find out what is going on is to avoid all mold-containing foods and see if symptoms improve (same for avoiding environmental molds) and do a low carbohydrate ('Candida Diet') - one thing at a time so you can see what is having an effect, if any. The expensive but perhaps more in-depth and accurate way would be to do functional lab testing for the above from the likes of Genova Diagnostics and Metametrix through an EI doc or nutritionist.

Hope some of this helps and the Patricia Kane stuff is useful to you. All the best!