How Mold Affects Your Brain

Jaban Moore, DC

Well, thank you so much for having me, it is exactly what you said, my mission is just to hopefully cut out the steps that I had to go through of searching with no direction and educate people, as much as possible, on what could be affecting their bodies and their brains. Because these neuro symptoms, whether it be Alzheimer’s or anxiety, or depression, are not just normal. There is something causing them.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right. So many of our patients hear that “This is just normal aging”. What do you expect? Your memory is not going to be as good. You are not going to think as clearly. I flatly reject that argument. There is so much that we can do. You and I share a lot of the same interests around diving into those root causes of disease and, especially, of neurodegenerative or mental health issues that really affect their day-to-day quality of life. So let’s start by talking about mycotoxins. I know that you have explored this deeply, having so many patients that have come to you with that concern. So how do you test for them? How does somebody know if they have them? What kind of symptoms might they be having if they have been exposed to mycotoxins?

Jaban Moore, DC

I’m going to start with the big picture. Mycotoxins come from mold. Mold is something that people think, “Oh, it is everywhere. it is okay, it is not a problem”. However, there are types of mold that are very toxic, and when you trap those mycotoxins, which is their off-gassing, their toxin that they put out when you trap any environment inside a home where the air doesn’t exchange with the outside very often. Especially in the wintertime, you get your windows closed, that toxin recirculates and it increases a lot. There are studies showing that it is two to three times more toxic inside a home than outside of a home. This can be a major problem in a home, even though, yes, mold can be anywhere — anywhere there is water. When it is trapped in an environment and mold, let’s just talk about symptoms. This can cause breathing issues. It is extremely damaging to the mitochondria. So I do all kinds of testing. We get into testing as we go. But when I see mitochondrial suppression or damage immediately, the first thought to me is, “Is there mold here?” Right?

Heather Sandison, ND

So let’s double-click on that. What is the best test to assess for that? If you see mitochondrial damage, what are you looking at? How would someone know if they had that?

Jaban Moore, DC

My favorite test to use is actually an organic acid test. I’m looking at the ketones and I’m looking at the Kreb cycle which if you go back to middle school, you remember going through the Krebs cycle, memorizing all the pieces, right? This is your energy cycle and if you see suppression there if I see more than two to three markers positive out of about the 20 on an OAT test, organic acid test.  I’m thinking, “Oh, crap, this person probably has either mold or radioactive toxicity which can be found in water, soil, uranium, radon, or radium”.

So those are the two things that I found that really cause major suppression. And to tie this into the brain, If you do not have the energy to think, you are going to brain fog. If you do not have the energy to heal. You are going to end up with neurodegenerative or physically degenerative processes happening in your body. But the brain is the first place this goes because from what we have seen in studies right now, the brain has about 10,000 mitochondria per cell. Whereas your muscle tissue only has 500. So of course, if your mitochondria are being damaged and there are so many more in the brain, you are going to see these neurodegenerative processes, you are going to lose memory, you lose thought process and function and that might be the sign that you are living in an unsafe environment.

Heather Sandison, ND

Now that makes so much sense that there are so many more mitochondria in a neuronal cell than there are in others. The brain, many of you know this: the brain only makes up about 2% of our body weight but uses more than 20% of the energy that we expend every day. That ATP that you were describing of the mitochondria it is responsible for creating ATP.  That powerhouse, that currency that our cells run on, and if we can’t create enough then it is going to be hard to find that name that we are looking for, calculate that tip when we are at a restaurant. So figuring out why the mitochondria aren’t effectively and efficiently making ATP, is like step number one for a doctor like you or I. And Mycotoxins, these toxins that molds make in a water-damaged building they can be a big part of the equation. There. So walk me through what that looks like with a patient of yours. What happens next after you figure out that they have elevated mycotoxins or actually, we did not even say that, how do you figure out that they have elevated mycotoxins and that is what’s driving mitochondrial dysfunction?

Jaban Moore, DC

There are a number of testing. As we were talking about, studying with Neal Nathan or with Richard Shoemaker are two of the big docs out there that really pushed this forward as a topic. They’ll talk about tests like C4a, AMH, and VIP, which are more of your blood testing. What I’ve done is, because I came from the Lyme world, C4a I see goes up with Lyme too. This is an immune and inflammation response. As much as it could be for mold, it can be for Lyme. I look at those tests for some people and that leads me to the next place, which is, do we test your home or do we do further testing in your body, right? I like an organic acid test at the start, so I see the markers I mentioned earlier but also if you have oxalates in your body. If you have methylation or toxic exposure. Tests showing positive. If you have symptoms of fight or flight, I’m starting to put this together. Mold might really be a part of this and that is when I go, “Okay, home or urine”.

So you can test urine tests for medical mycotoxins tests. These are tests that look for specifically, mycotoxins you can get from Great Plains Laboratory, RealTime Laboratory, and Vibrant America, there are a few other labs out there, but those are the big ones that I have used. They are testing for specific types of mycotoxins like ochratoxin A or looking at citrinin. There are so many different types of Mycotoxins. Vibrant America actually tests for 34 of them. If you have those in your urine and there is mold coming from somewhere, whether that is your school, your home, your work, or maybe even a colonization inside your body. So it is in you and it is coming out. The other way you look at this is home or we look at dust sample collections in Petri dishes and we look to see what is growing in your home. 

What are we finding in your home as far as spores from molds? And then based off from that we can compare that to either your urine or what we found in your blood. The reason I’m saying there are all these different components is because, depending upon the client, their health, and their situation, we may choose different testing. If your body seems like it is kind of worn out and shut down. We see low sodium and potassium in hair tests, we see low cholesterol, and we see low markers in your liver, you are probably not the best candidate to think that your body is detoxing. Well, you might be diagnosed with POTS or Dysnomia. You may have Mast Cell or chronic inflammatory response syndrome. 

In those cases, I do not find that this person, oftentimes, their urine sample test of, or mycotoxins coming out of their body doesn’t always agree with what we find as far as their inflammatory in their home. So because it is not agreeing, one thing that some people will say is to provoke the test. So push stuff out of their body because their body is not naturally detoxing and showing you what’s coming out. Well, provoking these people also causes Herxheimer reactions. It causes symptoms. They feel horrible if you provoke them. Sometimes I lean into some of those other tests that are not the urine tests because of that information. If they have Lyme disease maybe you can not run the inflammatory type testing because Lyme’s triggering that so you have got to look more at the urine so finding a practitioner that can navigate understanding, “Is this Lyme? Is this mold? What testing do we do and what does it actually mean for your body based off of your personal circumstances?” is going to be important.

Heather Sandison, ND

Yeah, we provoke everyone and we basically have a spectrum of how we do that. Everything from IV glutathione to on the more extreme end of big doses of IV glutathione and then on the gentler end for patients who are more susceptible or more sensitive, we’ll even just have them collect first morning urine after a hot shower the night before just to get things moving and then also to get the most concentrated urine. I think it sounds similar to you, I found in my practice that people who are not detoxifying we are not going to catch it in their urine. So we are going to think there is no mycotoxins in there even though there is an abundant amount wreaking havoc but we are not just catching it because they are not able to eliminate it. So they need detox more than anyone. However, we just have to go really, really slow and gently so that they can tolerate it all.

Jaban Moore, DC

Exactly. It is specifically looking at your client and making a custom fit recommendation for them and understanding how it is not one size fits all. This is not an area where we can just be like, “Well, the labs says provoke”, then just provoke and take that EDTA or that glutathione and then it wrecks their body and sometimes it is “Hey, guys, so I know you saw this little tiny amount, right?” we are just barely showing up on mold, so you think that is probably not from you or maybe it is probably not your main focus and maybe it is from food, but based on some other factors, I think it is going to go up. By the way, when we retest this in three or six months, it might be sky high on the tests and then when we run out of it inside your body, right? Because you hid it, you sequester, you put it off to the side, but now that we are getting the machinery of the body cleaning itself out, it goes up. Then over time you run out of it because we are cleaning it out and it goes down.

Heather Sandison, ND

It is always so interesting to have that conversation with patients. We say exactly the same thing that second test I typically follow up every 12 weeks as my goal rate but life happens, so it does no’t always happen. But that very classically, the first test is the tip of the iceberg and then that second test is where more patients are like, “Wait, what? I thought this was supposed to go down, but I’m not feeling sick or I’m actually feeling better”. So we have to sort of square that circle with them. But it is so nice and validating hearing another practitioner who is having this similar experience of first they go up and then they start going down and it is probably that really high number that is an actual reflection of what’s going on in the body.

Jaban Moore, DC

Absolutely. Sometimes I just tell clients, especially depending upon the financial situation, I run more testing more as a yes/no question than a how much question. Now, “is it there? yes or no?” If it is, let’s deal with it. You are going to get better as it goes away. I’m not necessarily tracking the amount now. It is nice to know that. But, then again, if finances do not allow us to rerun labs as often, I can take it as a yes/no and we can go from there because, again, based off of your detox pathways, based off of the provocation, based off of just the vitality of the body, we are going to see different amounts coming out. So instead of me going, “Oh, you are at 100, so we need to do X, Y, or Z. It is okay, you are at 100, but  what are these other factors and how does it apply?” That is just me doing this for a long period of time and knowing that chronic illness is not a straight line.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right. No doubt about that. So talk us through a little bit of what that would look like. What would the patient journey look like for someone who does have molds or mycotoxins affecting their brain and nervous system?

Jaban Moore, DC

You know something I talk about a lot? Something that has really touched my heart in my clinic, is kids. The way that mold can create these inflammatory immune responses is where they can be diagnosed as PANS or PANDAS, which is a subcategory of autoimmune stuff like this. The situation where the toxin has triggered an immune response which triggers inflammation, when this is in the brain, it is called autoimmune cellulitis. It can trigger anxiety and depression and tics and all of these brain-on-fire like symptoms. That is a really good description. I wrote a book on it and it is a really good description that really resonates with people and you can imagine if your brain is on fire, it is going to degenerate over time, it is going to break down, you are going to end up with Alzheimer’s and dementia or Parkinson’s disease, these other things are going to happen and understanding that mold can trigger that we have got to do things like you are saying, what’s the journey here?

You have got to understand that the first step is we have got to get you to a safe place. If I see mold in your body, where is it coming from? It could have been from a previous home. It could be work, school, the current home. So find where it is at, make sure you are in a safe environment. I do not just do mold. I’m talking about water, food, air hygiene, people-safe environment, right? Then because mold is such an overwhelming thing because it is not like eating food one time and getting food poisoning. It is where you are living and your body feels like it is at war. So, your body goes into a state of fight or flight.

Now your body’s constantly going, your cortisol is up, your electrolytes are draining out of you, your digestion is becoming off. Dysbiosis is developing because your body is using up all of its bile on detoxing mold. So there is all these pieces that are coming into your bodies, you are living in mold. Once we have got you in a safe place and I got to deal with the fact that your body may feel like it is having PTSD-like response. You walk into a building, there is a little bit of mold in there and you get a headache. Your body goes on shutdown, you feel like you are not safe anywhere. So I’m like, “okay, safe place, feel safe”. These are two of my top priorities for clients when we are going to make sure that we are addressing those pieces. Then once we know those two pieces are addressed, then I take another step back and I go, “Okay, we have talked about those pieces, we know that they have mold, what else do they have?” They have Lyme, they have parasites, they have radioactive elements, they have heavy metals. We have mycoplasma and we have GI bacterial infections like SIBO. Which one of these things is going to be the first piece of the puzzle that we can address that will make the biggest change for this person, but not set them off? Sometimes parasites have to be my first step because mold has suppressed the immune system and allowed parasites and parasites stop you from being able to go to the bathroom in time. Now we can’t excrete. If I try to move mold, it is just going to go to the gut and then get recirculated because you do not poop.

Heather Sandison, ND

I think so many people assume that if you say parasites, you have watery diarrhea. That is often not the case, right? Many people have this opposite experience of not being able to have a bowel movement, which means that it is going to be even harder to get rid of the toxins, which means your immune system is going to be even more suppressed, which means you are going to build up more parasites. It becomes a downward spiral on the health path. So, okay, I love how you are describing intervening at the level that someone can tolerate, and parasites being one of them.

Jaban Moore, DC

Parasites for me is like part of the detox funnel. I have to get those guys out of the way because there is something called a liver fluke that gets in your liver that dams the thing up.

Heather Sandison, ND

How common do you think this is?

Jaban Moore, DC

A friend of mine jokes around and says, “If you have a policy of a parasite”, and I’m just like, “all right, well, I mean, kind of”. Is it pathogenic to the point where you need to treat it individually? Let’s just throw some numbers: Strongyloides, which is a type of parasite that is a nematode. P. S. Nematodes in a study were found to be 100 out of 100 in autopsied brains of MS patients had nematode parasites in the brain, 25% had Lyme disease. So you would talk about something breaking down your brain and chomping on it. How about some parasites and some borrelia burgdorferi for Lyme? You have almost 100% chance to be MS. What about Alzheimer’s? There was some discussion of Alzheimer’s, too. That is a key piece that I know we are talking about more, but that is a really key piece. 100 million people in the world deals with strongyloides and just 1 million people in the United States each year deal with Giardia, which is a type of parasite. It is really common. In the United States, we avoid the topic, we avoid the conversation because they are dirty. Let’s be honest here, we are eat worse than our pets. Our pets eat these little cube things that have been triple tested from whoever that are really super defined on what those standards are and probably do not have a lot of parasite. But we eat sushi and some of us like our rare steaks and some of us like our raw vegetables, all of which can carry parasites. Then you eat this andit goes into our gut. If you are dealing with mold or stress or taking a Tums or some other proton PARP inhibitor or digestive track medication, it makes you more vulnerable. Parasites get in there and they become really common. If you have GI symptoms, the first thing that I’m thinking about, do we have parasites? You may not, but I’m thinking about it. I personally do a parasite cleanse, a couple of times a year. Just because I know the environment we live in is conducive for a parasitic infection because they are in the ground, they are in the water, they are on our pets. You groom your pet twice a year, just like you brush your teeth, or go to the dentist twice a year. What makes you think you are better than your pet? Your food is less clean and you are touching and living around your pet.

Heather Sandison, ND

No, it is so wild. We live in a day and age where people travel and third-world travel is another place where many people are exposed. That is a question I ask every patient. I’m sure you do, too. Just that issue came up and 20 years ago I went to Africa on a study abroad or a mission or some trip, and I’ve never been the same since. Parasite cleanse is probably going to happen in our working relationship together. So parasites are kind of hard to find on stool testing. They are notorious, right? This is why a conventional gastroenterologist is going to look at stool three times and MP3 is what that is called because these tests are notorious for missing parasites. So what do you put your confidence and how do you know if somebody has parasites or not? Do you treat most people regardless of what the testing says or do you look for a clue?

Jaban Moore, DC

A definite look for symptoms like parasites, something itchy but skin rashes thing, women with horrible cycles, dried throat. That kind of throws me toward that but digestive symptoms are a huge one, waking at night, teeth grinding, these are parasite symptoms to me. If you have those things.

Heather Sandison, ND

There is a lot in there that I think a lot of our listeners would not have connected to parasites. So teeth grinding and bruxism, that is something that you would connect to parasites.

Jaban Moore, DC

It is, definitely. it is one of those ones. I’ve got a whole questionnaire to fill out, if you score over this, you probably got a parasite.

Heather Sandison, ND

So can we direct people to that? Can we director our listeners to that questionnaire? Is that available?

Jaban Moore, DC

It is on my website, yeah. drjabanmoore.com

Heather Sandison, ND

drjabanmoore.com.

Jaban Moore, DC

Yep.

Heather Sandison, ND

That is it. Great. Okay, so go fill that questionnaire out. If you are scoring high, I think this is a really unique conversation a lot of people do not hear about because as you said, we think of worms and parasites as gross. We do not want to think about it kind of like we do not want to think about Alzheimer’s later in life, right? We want to avoid these questions. Yet this is one of the things, certainly in my clinical experience, sometimes treating parasites is the thing that changes the trajectory of someone’s health. It is like a reset for them. They start sleeping better because, as you mentioned, the grinding at night, on a full moon, is such an interesting component of this, too. I do not know if you have noticed that people tend to have worse symptoms around the full moon, but there are all of these symptoms that a lot of people would not connect to a parasitic risk and do not realize that this is actually kind of likely.

Jaban Moore, DC

It is very likely, especially in today’s day and age, for those who have health struggles. It comes down to resilience and their bodies, or our bodies, being healthy, right? We do not live in an environment conducive to our bodies being able to take care of itself. How many of us have taken a bunch of antibiotics that may have wiped out streams of bacteria that protect our gut? Maybe you did not do it recently, but as a kid, how many rounds of antibiotics did you get from your parents due to an ear infection or something? How many of us do not eat food that is conducive for protecting us, but even food that is not great for us, like high carbohydrate, high sugar foods versus think about what ancient cultures did. They put wasabi and oregano and these antiparasitic herbs with their foods.

Yeah, they might taste good, but they are also also antiparasitic. They are not sugar. Then our day to day life is stress and non-circadian rhythms. Sleeping leads to decreased hydrochloric acid in your digestive tract, which protect you from parasites. Then, of course, we kiss on and love on our animals and we touch the dirt. It is so interesting, because one of my clients, when I was out in a small town near where I am at, that was a farm community, and I started talking about parasites. He goes, “Oh, I remember when I was a kid, my mom would go, time to dawn the cattle, come over here, you are getting yours, too”. It is the same stuff and they just gave a little bit less to the client and then gave some to the cow. They just did it twice a year.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right. This is so much more common than we realize. It is one of those things where people do not get the, I’m sorry, I do not know what happened to my video.

Jaban Moore, DC

Kept as like I kept talking. I was like, uh.

Heather Sandison, ND

I’m going to because that is really fast. Yeah. So it is so interesting, right? These farming communities and these people who have been in touch with the earth and the cycles and the rhythms and the animals, they have this wisdom that we probably want to be treating parasites a little more frequently than we do in our modern day and age, and certainly in more of a city type lifestyle, although they are very rare because in cities we eat even more sushi and we might be exposed even more. We have these higher stress lifestyle like you are describing where we do not have that hydrochloric acid, right? How many of us are eating on the go or eating at our computer, reading stressful emails or that kind of thing that is going to suppress that immune function and the hydrochloric acid production that protects us. So fascinating. So for your clients, do you use medications? You supplement herbs like what’s your go to for a parasite cleanse? What does that look like?

Jaban Moore, DC

For a parasite cleanse, for me, I definitely use a lot of herbs and supplements and I use not just one. There is really common names out there. There is black walnut, there is wormwood. Those are probably the top two that people hear about. But there are also zeaxanthin and oregano and clove. Sometimes you are taking those pieces and you are cycling it depending upon the time of year, depending upon your time of month, right? You mentioned full moon earlier. So during the full moon, parasites come out. 

They are a little bit more active based off their life cycle and due to gravity from the moon. So we side a little heavier on the full moon. We also use biofilm disruptors to help break down the biofilms that wrap around these parasites, so a biofilm can be a fat or a cys-like structure that protects that animal or that parasite. We have got to break that down. So timing, protection, protective barriers, and then different herbs, rotating those for different types of parasites is all going to be really important. I tend to do, sometimes, three or four different parasite protocols in a row with different herbs, cycling on and off, just to make sure that I get deep enough into that piece of the puzzle to make sure we get the work done.

Heather Sandison, ND

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I studied under Simon Yu and Klinghardt and they came up with some of these more aggressive parasite protocols. I think that is, again, one of the two services from the conventional community is that oftentimes they will undertreat. It’ll just be a three day course and then you are expected to have gotten over it. Yet, really, maybe it is a three or seven day course and we need to do it every month for three to four months or we need to do one parasite medication or herb followed by the next and, as you mentioned, rotating them. That does a much more thorough job so that we can complete this and get your gut back on track. I want to, sorry. Go ahead, please.

Jaban Moore, DC

it is just being respectful of life cycles and paying attention to the actual organism. A three day cycle you get just a few of them of any of them augurs well, there is Lyme or parasites or otherwise. You are only getting a small fraction of what is actually there.

Heather Sandison, ND

Well, I’m so grateful you just said that, because that is a great segway into Lyme, which is where a lot of your personal experience is. These bugs are complicated, which is part of why the testing and the treatment is complicated. Not all doctors agree, but hearing from you, someone who’s actually been through the Lyme process, first, can you tell us what your experience with Lyme was in terms of how it affected your brain and your cognitive function?

Jaban Moore, DC

I was probably 18 to 22 years old and I was in college, give or take, undergrad. During that period of time I was on the track team. The biggest things that I noticed when I was going through school is, as I just started getting stronger, then I started getting a little bit more brain fog, a little bit more fatigued. I just noticed this decline, from 18 to 22, I should still be going all the way up and not on the way down. Then I got hit with erectile dysfunction, which was due to hormones crashing. 

This is how these organisms are affecting you. They are affecting your hormones, your neurotransmitters, your mitochondria, your brain function. Because Lyme, again, goes back into the brain. You see this in those studies where 25% of MS brain had Lyme. It is breaking down the tissue there. So that was my experience and I have ve worked with so many people that experienced so many mental health struggles, all of the emotions and the symptoms because of the fact that this is creating inflammation in the brain. I always tell people an inflamed brain is a depressed or anxious brain. So we have got to make sure that we keep inflammation out of the brain. The body’s pretty good at that until it is overwhelmed.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right. Okay. So you brought up erectile dysfunction. Let’s just go down that path for a minute because a lot of people do not always put that together. Part of that can be hormonal, of course, and as we age, our hormones decrease. So I’m certainly a proponent of hormone replacement therapy for both men and women to help the brain, because we know that those sex hormones are so important for signaling in the brain. Additionally, if there is a man is struggling with erectile dysfunction, this can be about blood flow. Those arteries, the diameter of the arteries into the penis is very similar to the heart and then again to the brain and so if we are not getting a blood flow to our brain, of course, we are going to get cognitive decline, right? We do not have enough nutrients or support going into the those neurons that are going to be responsible for, again, grabbing that word that we are trying to remember or putting together the sequence of events for executive function. 

So this can be one of those super clue that tells us not just about what’s going on in the bedroom, but also what some of that pathophysiology and, again, going back to the root causes of why you are struggling cognitively and additionally right there the connection between how the microbes create inflammation that can clog up and create more clotting, that can lead to poor blood flow as well. There are so many components that overlap here. So take us through as there is also complexity and debate in the field, right? So what is your approach to Lyme? How do you get started? What do you guide your clients on here?

Jaban Moore, DC

I kind of mentioned earlier, the direction of how things went, which was a safe place, right? Because if you are living in mold, you are not going to get past Lyme and if you are nervous systems are again, same thing, I’m not going to go back into that. Once I get to the part of Lyme and I’ve got the parasites, out of the way, the mold in your environment out of the way and we get to Lyme. That the secret is you have got to make sure that you pay attention to these other pieces and so many people within the Lyme field. Let me give you a PICC line and I’ve got clients, I’ve done this PICC line for eight straight years. So antibiotics through an I.V. into their body for weeks, months, years on end. 

What are you missing? What is not being done? That is what my mind goes to. Because most of the time, within seven to 14 days, whatever treatment you have given somebody, at least in my experience, that seven or 14 days, the majority of the work is done. You are still catching stuff later. It is like the little stuff here and there. But the majority of the work is done within seven to 14 days of whatever herb or antibiotic or etc. is going into the body. So my thing is do the pre-work, make sure we are safe, make sure we are nutrient dense, let’s get the Bs and the electrolytes back in. Let’s get rid of the parasites that Lyme disease can go back in and live inside of to protect itself. Then when we get to Lyme, we are going to use a cocktail of herbs. That is the way that I like it. I’m not a huge fan of antibiotics. Antibiotics can’t get into the brain anyway. What I’ve seen studies-wise is there is back and forth on agreement but Lyme can get to your brain between 12 and 24 hours, antibiotics do not get in the brain very well. So because we are unable to get in the brain very well, we need to make sure that we are using tools that either can cross the blood brain barrier or you are using tools that are large and long enough that do not do mitochondrial damage like antibiotics do, so that we can do it long enough that the body then can go clean out the brain itself. So I’m wanting to get somebody on things like an Isobar, which is a product I use from cell corps or in a bio and ALS our ways of many different products. we are going to do them for 30 days in a row. They are going to rotate to another rotate. They are usually probably doing about three months worth, not that three months. It is all protocol. It is three months in the spectrum of we took care of mold, parasite, we took care of viruses and toxins around it because so often with Lyme, the missing link is all you focused on, was the bacteria.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right, right, right.

Jaban Moore, DC

We get laser focused on bacteria. We aren’t looking for these other pieces. If we can get the other pieces and lower their threshold, the body can clear out the rest of what it needs to clear out for you to feel well.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right. The immune system. So to meet the treatment halfway, certainly it does seem like the trend in the world is moving away from I.V. antibiotics or even oral antibiotics and towards more of these combination formulas of herbs. It is a relief to me because I think, similar to you, I was seeing patients who were on PICC lines for years. Then as soon as they tried to remove the antibiotics, they would decompensate again, everything would come raging back. So, these nuances of treating the biofilm and of rotating potentially, and there is new testing available, too Do you have a favorite Lyme test that you use?

Jaban Moore, DC

So I’ve used in the past, that is DNA connections, which was decent. This is a urine test and for the price it was great. IGen-X has been the gold standard for as long as I’ve been in practice last ten years is kind of the one that is been coveted. I saw a study come out this summer that said the Vibrant America panel had beat it out slightly with specificity. I do like the presentation of that test. So I do run a lot of fiber in Vibrant America. But those are the ones that I’ve used the most. Well, I can tell you is the CDC Western Blot Elisa testing is not even worth doing. So make sure that you are getting some sort of specialized testing. Those are the ones that I loved and do not just run Borrelia, to make sure that you are running some of those co-infections along with it, because sometimes you miss on ammonia, but you get the coinfection, which leads you back down that same path.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right? So this little nuances to Bartonella and Babesia. Yeah. Do you, can you share with us, something that a symptom that might make someone think that maybe it is Bartonella or Babesia versus Bahia, like the classic Lyme disease?

Jaban Moore, DC

Yeah. So Bartonella would be heel pain, which is one that is kind of unique to it, but it can also be irritation and rage and anger. So those are two symptoms and there is the classic cat scratch fever. You get what looks like a cat scratch across your midsection, your back. That can be like a pink, purple, red scratch looking, skin change or rash. So that is almost.

Heather Sandison, ND

A stretch mark, right? Yeah. Stretch marks.

Jaban Moore, DC

Yeah, exactly. Then the Babesia, but Babesia is one where you get headaches in the back of your neck and then you get achy joints like the actual joints, you feel like you are getting a rheumatoid arthritis, arthritis-type achy joint pain where you are aging all this. I’ve had a client come in where their hand is literally stuck because arthritis had started to develop in the hand as she was diagnosed with RA, which is rheumatoid arthritis. Then after going through Lyme protocols, including the Babesia over the last couple of years, she’s been able to actually get her hand back to full function and the arthritis is actually upon x-ray, left and she’s back to full function. So it was actually generated by an infection. 

I tell people all the time, your autoimmune disease is your immune system is dysfunctional. I do not know why. IBS, is your gut hurts or has symptoms and I do not know why. Fibromyalgia, your body hurts and I do not know why. Chronic fatigue, you are tired. I do not know why. So as you start listening to the symptoms that you have or write them out and then you go to your doctor and your doctor says, “Oh, well, you have this thing and we are just going to diagnose you with it”. That is just your tag. Start figuring out what’s causing the tag or the title.

Heather Sandison, ND

Right? Right. I love that. That is such a great reminder of so many people are focused and I think there is some degree of reassurance people get from having a tag like having a diagnosis, “hey, maybe somebody knows what’s going on here”, yet we do not want to stop there. So many of these things are caused by something else and that is where we want to play, is in that root cause level so that we can get real, lasting results. I want to make sure that people know more about where to find you. So you gave us your website again? drjabanmoore.com. Dr. Jaban Moore and tell us a little bit about what you offer for somebody who wants to sign up as a client with you.

Jaban Moore, DC

Yes, I work virtually. We have got a couple of clinicians in my clinic that are also working virtually. We do have the option. You can come in the clinic if you want to. Just come see us face to face. We have had people fly and drive and say hello. It is nice after they are getting better. They want to shake your hand, right? Which is awesome. I love meeting clients, but we offer a number of different things. We offer more intensive. We also offer more appointments. It is really customizable based off of what you probably may need. Based off of you, right? So that is what we are trying to always do is make that fit and we are constantly putting out free information to Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, our website because that is the mission. That is the goal is to shorten the distance between “I do not feel well”, and figuring out what it is and then how to get well. Because I know on my own personal journey it was, I do not know what I’m looking for. If you do not know what you are looking for, it is really hard to get answers. So that is the mission, is to find a way to get people just at least have the concept of what they are looking for. Of course, I want to give as many answers as possible, but that is the mission.

Heather Sandison, ND

I love it. Well, we have talked about some really key, critical things, I think, here in terms of root causes of cognitive decline, Lyme, mycotoxins and parasites. So I could not be more grateful to you for your time and sharing your expertise and wisdom and also your own personal journey with us. It has been really great having you here.

Jaban Moore, DC

Well, I really appreciate it. This is a major topic that is only accelerating as a problem. And neurological symptoms and decline, we have got to get this figured out because that is the greatest fear for so many people, to lose the ability to remember and think. So I’m just really happy to be a part of this.

Heather Sandison, ND

Oh, thank you so much to you and it is been a pleasure having you.