12. Functional Medicine and Mold: A Deep Dive into Mycotoxin Testing with Mike Schrantz

In this episode of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast, I sit down again with my friend and colleague Mike Schrantz, an Indoor Environmental Professional I often call the “Doctor of Homes.” I’m the “Doctor of People,” and together we work at the intersection where sick buildings and sick bodies collide.

Today we step into a thorny topic that affects a lot of patients and a lot of practitioners: human mold testing, specifically urine mycotoxin testing.

If you have ever had a urine mycotoxin test, or if you have been told your results prove you “have mold,” you are going to want to hear this conversation. If you are a practitioner using these tests, you may feel challenged by what we say. Our intent is not to criticize, shame, or polarize. Our intent is truth telling and clarity, because the stakes are real. These results can lead to major decisions about treatment, remediation, belongings, and even moving.

We walk through the two major camps we see in the mold illness world today. One is the Shoemaker and CIRS framework, where testing is focused largely on blood-based inflammatory markers and pattern recognition. The other camp is the growing use of urinary mycotoxin testing through labs like RealTime, Vibrant, and Mosaic. We discuss how urine mycotoxin testing is sometimes being used as a standalone diagnostic tool, and why that can become dangerous.

Mike shares what he sees in the field when people come to him with a urine mycotoxin result and a diagnosis that triggers panic, decision fatigue, and expensive next steps. We talk about the hard questions that still need answers, including how labs establish “normal” versus “elevated,” what healthy control data is being used, and why repeatability and interpretation are major concerns.

A key theme is this: mycotoxins can show up in urine even in people who feel well, and mycotoxins can also come from diet and everyday exposures, not only from a moldy home. That does not mean a urine test is useless. It means the results need context. A urine mycotoxin test can be one piece of the puzzle, but it is rarely the whole puzzle.

We also discuss provocation testing, the difference between qualitative and quantitative meaning, and why overconfident conclusions can cost people more than money. They can cost peace of mind.

This episode is for anyone trying to avoid rabbit holes and get real about what these tests can and cannot tell you. Whether you are a patient or a clinician, the goal is the same: make decisions with clarity, not fear.

If you want help navigating mold illness step by step, including testing, interpretation, environment, and treatment sequencing, my team at Root Seek is here to support you.

Let’s get real and get results.

Connect with us:

Root Seek Health: https://rootseekhealth.com/

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Transcript

Setting The Mission And Welcome

Dr. Mark Su 0:09

I'm Dr. Mark Su and welcome to the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. Join me and our community weekly as we bring you unfiltered health from inflammation to longevity. Real stories, real people, real solutions. Experience real life health changes from both patients and practitioners. And learn how to turn cutting-edge information into real results in your own life so you can feel better, live longer, live healthier, and be confident and clear in your healthcare choices. Let's get real and get results. Hey, welcome, Brent. I'm Dr. Mark Su. This is the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. And we're here, as usual, we're all about truth telling and creating clarity to help you live your best life. And we're here again today with Extraordinaire Indoor Environmental Professional Mike. So thanks for joining us. And yeah, let's just jump in. So today, if you're we're gonna get in some thorny bushes, right? We're just gonna put it out there between Mike and I. We know this is a little bit, it's a little thorny. So we're gonna talk about mold testing in humans, right? So if you've ever been tested for mold by a practitioner, you're gonna want to hear some truth about your results today. If you're a practitioner and you're doing urine mycotoxin testing, all right, we're being a little technical on the terms there, urine testing looking for the toxins. You may not love what you hear today, if you if this is new to you, but it's the truth. So stay tuned. Mike and I, since we're since this is the third in the sequence here and we're still developing a bit of a runway, if you will, with the podcast community anyway. So Mike and I have known each other for probably five, maybe six years now. We're both on the board, have been on the board within a nonprofit organization, International Society of Environmentally Core Illness. He is, we like to say he is Doctor of Homes. I represent Doctor of People, especially those people living in such sick homes. So Doctor of Homes, Doctor of People, and we're here collaborating to intersect on, especially, but not exclusively, the topic of mold-related illness, where it leads to sick environments can lead to a lot of health problems. So that's where we started with the first session that you and I did, Mike. We did a little history of and validation of mold-related illness. Some people just like to call it mold. And we specifically got into the dangers of binary thinking, right? Everything's black and white when it comes to environmental mold and the gaslighting that can happen with through all that. And the big question that we dug into about how clean is clean enough, that there really isn't such a thing as mold-free, but it's a term that gets thrown around and can cause some ramifications with that gaslighting. And then session two, we dug in a little bit more and we talked through, okay, so if a patient has a client has their home or apartment or their domicile, their residential domicile evaluated by an IEP like yourself and they get back a report, then there are effectively the way I present it to you as how I talk it through with patients in preparation for what they're gonna get from a person like yourself, four categories of fixing, like remediation. And uh we dug into one of those specific categories and me asking you, hey, what are some of the biggest high yield or problems of those four categories? Did you dig into? And we got into that big question about what I can keep or what do I need to throw out, right? And so we're not gonna get into all those details again. We'll refer people back to those if you haven't listened to them, watched them before. But that's where we're at. And so today, where we landed as a conclusion, similarly between those two sessions, was the similar common ground is it's not there isn't really a binary answer. As you like to say, Mike, even among the quote unquote celebrity multics, since which I love that term, there isn't like a magic number that, hey, if you have a 15, a spore count of 15, then you're okay. And if you have a 16, all hell's gonna break through, break loose, right? So we were entertaining those questions. How sick are you as a person? And really how sick is the environment? And then ultimately, what are the projected or estimated costs that you're gonna have to go through in terms of money, time, and effort? And therefore, how do we sequence this out and make decisions that fit for you as an individual? Because it's not a one size fits all practice here with the topic of mold illness, which and that's where those aren't easy answers, but we're often gaslit in in our practitioner community, the patient community, social media, whatever, in some of the messaging that we get. Sound fair, Mike, or anything you want to add to that?

 Mike Schrantz 4:10

No, you're on point.

Dr. Mark Su 4:10

You're on point. Okay.

 Mike Schrantz 4:12

I agree. There's I know we're about to dive really deep here, so I'm waiting for the question. Saving it up. Yeah.

Shoemaker Protocol And Blood Markers

Dr. Mark Su 4:16

Okay. So today, and then I'll show up here. So today we're going to shift a bit from talking about testing the home, which is the focus of those first two, or your apartment or workplace or whatever. And now we're moving into testing the person, right? Testing you as an individual. If you have chronic inflammation, that we have symptoms, whether it's autoimmune, you just call it autoimmune conditions. You got symptoms and conditions that conventional medicine has not sufficiently helped you with, and you're searching for answers, right? So here we are. Mike, we're talking about testing individuals now. So you as an IEP, but you've been in the mold illness community longer than I have. Okay. You were in this from the from the building side, the environmental side, but you've been in this community longer than I have and worked with a lot of practitioners. As I've said before, I'll say it again here. I say this recurrently, you are, in my view, you're the most networked IEP in the country, right? Not, I think you and I are both similar. Like we wouldn't go touting with the smartest, brightest to however that's even measured. But networking and learning is a really big part of this whole non-conventional medicine world because things are changing all the time and understanding the landscape, different schools of thought, it matters because things change quickly and easily. With you being someone who's well entrenched in this community historically and still now, and you've been part of that e-community with the surviving mold community, Dr. Richie Shoemaker, who I've always said deserves so much credit for kind of like being alone stick in the wind, having brought this topic to the forefront for all those years. You know him personally, you know that community well, you're still in that community, and you've got your sort of space in other communities as well. You've seen the evolution of mold illness practice, both observationally from pay from practitioners and working with those practitioners, and of course, from the IEP community as well, and all the variations over time from that surviving mold's out of protocol and teaching and branching into different directions. How do you see human practitioners, at least these days, test and diagnose patients with mold-related illness?

 Mike Schrantz 6:01

Yeah, you're I go back to 2014, anyways, when I was really introduced to the world of chronic illness, naturopathic work, basically stuff that conventional medicine was not necessarily able to address and eventually got exposed to these different modalities of treatment. The first one that I really got to learn about was the shoemaker protocol. And we can dive as as deep as we want to go, but just initially to say that I learned early on that there was work that Dr. Shoemaker did a pioneer in the field. It hasn't been looked at to this degree before. He's looking at patients, he's looking at a cluster of symptoms. He's starting to introduce inflammatory markers like C4A and MMP9 and TGF beta 1 and these other ones that they're looking at that as a pattern, it would show evidence of exposure. And obviously, then that became a topic: how do we get that person out of exposure? How do we treat this person?

Dr. Mark Su 6:58

And again by the way, those tests you just mentioned, they're all blood tests.

 Mike Schrantz 7:01

Those are all blood tests, yeah.

Dr. Mark Su 7:03

They're all blood tests that you can't do on your own. You have to get it ordered by a practitioner.

 Mike Schrantz 7:06

Yes, thank you for that. And so they were doing all these things, and then it led to other questions. We know we got to get people out of exposure. We know that some people, how do we use a binder or detox that individual? And then that got into bigger topics of why is it that some people are affected or some aren't? And then there got to the topic of people with different susceptibilities. And again, we can go deeper if we need to on that. And the point is that I really got that was like my intro into that modality of treatment. What I started to see not soon after that was this introduction of urinary mycotoxin testing. And at the first, I was just an observer. I didn't know what I didn't know. And what I see happening now in two, I know there's more than two camps, Mark, but if I was to say the biggest camps that I observe is the shoemaker protocol, which has a, this is not a testament of a perfected or everyone agrees with. I certainly support it. I've been treated the shoemaker protocol and have recovered successfully. What I'm trying to express is that there's that method that has an actual protocol that's been published. And then what I also see is I see the camp of urinary mycotoxins. And what I see a lot of, although maybe some trending mark in the right direction, which I'm about to define, is that what I'm starting, or what I used to see a ton of was the as being used as a diagnostic tool so that if you had elevated levels, you were patient, you did a urinary mycotoxin test, it came back elevated per the lab's proprietary information that the doctor would say if you have biotoxin illness. And even as an IEP who I'm naive, I thought the smartest person in the world when I was a kid was a doctor. And I assumed that the clinicians that were utilizing it, and certainly there are many are that are incredibly smarter than I am. But I started to real ask questions like, How are you? How is that a diagnostic tool when it's like a moment in time? What is it that and so I really inquired about it so I could learn? And the reason I did mark was because people were asking me about what they should do to their homes. And I'm trying to value what we know about their health because it all it when the rubber meets the road mark is when people start hearing the cost to remediate, the cost to test, and they want to feel like the money that they might need to accumulate or spend is going towards a good cause. Not a big deal if we're talking about a $5 deal, but if we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars, now you really want to feel like this makes sense.

Rise Of Urine Mycotoxin Testing

Dr. Mark Su 9:27

So let me summarize that. You and I both know the so the shoemaker, if anybody is listening, doesn't isn't familiar with it, then the shoemaker protocol is this, yeah, it's a taught protocol from the surviving mold community led by Dr. Richard Schumacher. And testing is, if I recall, I think every test is a blood test, the familiarity I have with that historically.

 Mike Schrantz 9:45

Yeah, the protocol the formal protocol is yes, there is advanced ancillary testing they do, neuroquant, gene blood too. But yeah.

Dr. Mark Su 9:52

Thank you. So yeah, most of it's all blood testing. And just to put a high-level piece to it, as you alluded to, it's really looking at inflammation markers in a human in response to whether it's mold bugs or the toxins that mold can make or fungus can make. And and uh just to cap that also, I think my understanding is the shoemaker protocol, the shoemaker teaching, it's a it's the heavy emphasis is on the inflammatory response. So I'm sure there's eye and CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. Yeah. So people know that term. There's no doubt people who are listening to this who are gonna are watching this who are gonna know that term SRS, CIRS. And so it's about the inflammation piece. And then you're saying, yeah, over time, which is what we're gonna dig into today, is these urine mycotoxin tests were introduced. So they're testing for the toxins made by fungus, not for the bugs themselves. And it's a urine collection. And you're saying, hey, when I'm working with clients, when it comes down to those big decisions about how much money, time, effort are we gonna spend, as we talked about in the first couple of sessions, into remediation, if there are times they're presenting you or coming into conversation what their results were. And that's I think where you're starting here. Okay, so I need to better, I would like to, for your client's sake, for your sake, better understand this urine testing so that you can try to match expectations and gain some clarity, help them gain some clarity, much less you gain some clarity as to how you make recommendations on what to do with their environment. 100%.

 Mike Schrantz 11:16

It always boils down to it because I will tell people in the beginning of our consultation, I go, let's talk about your health and where you're at, not to play doctor, but so I can appreciate it, because I guarantee you we're gonna come right back to it at the end when we have those conversations. So critical, it's so meaningful and important to understand what we know about the patient's health so we can honor it. That's uh that's awesome.

Dr. Mark Su 11:35

Yeah, because I'm sure a lot of people, it's not, yeah, there's a lot of different reasons. I'm imagining a lot of IPs may not get into that, or vice versa. How often do practitioners get into talking about the environmental side, right? Yeah, which is something we're trying to, we're trying to move, make prog better progress on with the organization. We're trying to educate both sides of the coin about the other sides of the coin. Yeah. But cool, let's go ahead and if the cool, okay, let's go ahead and be more specific. So when it comes to these urine tests, there's so there's three, there might be some evolving, but let's just say there's three tests, three companies making these labs available, making these urine mycotoxin tests available, right?

 Mike Schrantz 12:07

Yeah, you want to click off those three and I'll mention one other Yeah, so real-time labs, real-time laboratories is a well-known company that offers more than just urinary mycotoxin testing, but that's certainly a well-known one. I think Vibrant Weldness is still doing their thing. And used to be Great Plains, I believe it's Mosaic now is the first three that come to mind for me.

Dr. Mark Su 12:26

Yep, perfect. Yeah, we won't get into some evolving other ones, but uh, those are the three big ones. And then just to be clear here, especially more for the practitioners who might be listening in, then there are these organic acid tests. A lot of patients have are familiar with this too, but who've been around the block with this topic, unfortunately. But organic acid testing, the that's also urine testing, but for the most part. But the if a practitioner is talking about evaluating for mold or fungus through an organic acid test, then they're actually assessing for metabolites, the markers for the bug, not the toxins. So we're gonna say focus today on those three first labs you mentioned real-time, big, vibrant that do that offer urine testing for the actual toxins made by fungus. Yeah, fair enough. Fair. That's that will keep the conversation easy that way. Okay. Yeah, let's just go ahead and dig in. So there's some controversies, we'll call it around the around this testing. There's definitely different schools of thought. So the spectrum goes from one side of this, one one school thought of these are some practitioners which say, or we've known them, we've known them to say they're not valid, don't use them. And I don't know where the surviving mold community is with that these days, but it's historically it's always been the case. I'm presuming it's still the case. But it's not just the surviving mold community who has that school thought. And then, and then the all the way on the other side of the coin, which is what you were alluding to and we've alluded to in the previous session or two, is that there are some practitioners and or IEPs, you can tell me, who are interpreting this result as so solidly diagnostic that all kinds of recommendations are being made on it, and sometimes almost even, or you might even tell me outright, I think you have told me outright sometimes as a standalone test on its own to say you have this as a diagnosis and you not only that, but should do X, Y, and Z with your environment, making presumptions on that as well. So, in case we didn't, we've touched on a little bit in the I think in the past one, but uh yeah, in a kind of more extreme case like that, you want to give an example or two of that scenario that you've been involved in?

Costs, Decisions, And Patient Impact

Direct-To-Consumer Testing Concerns

 Mike Schrantz 14:15

Sure. Yeah, we part of the challenge for I guess this is just a an attempt and a sincere attempt to sympathize, if not emphasize that or be have empathetic feelings towards the clinicians that are really struggling to find any sort of legitimate solution to answer questions. I think a lot of people mean they're not trying to be nefarious and or devious and have you just spend hundreds or thousands of dollars as the patient. But to give the example, we say again, I haven't seen it as much from a frequency standpoint because I think the awareness is growing to the point where clinicians are having to face the music of some of these concerns. But we've seen a handful, I would say a dozen of I don't see every patient in the world, but a dozen where literally they'll come to us because the doctor was not sure what was going on. They heard something about mold and mycotoxins could maybe cause some of these symptoms. So they go onto a website that's got a lot of attractive information, seems like it's the solution. Have the patient pee in a cup, have them send off that sample. Sample comes back with what the lab, and this is key, is calling an elevated level. And there's so much questions we have. One of which, and we can dive deeper on that, Mark, in a bit, is the issue of controls, what control, healthy controls have been used to define what's considered to be elevated. And there's even subtopics within that, but that they will come back positive and they'll say to me, Well, my doctor says I have biotoxin illness because I have this in my system. The challenge with that, Mark, for me, is that it immediately opens up an issue of spending a lot of money to investigate further that could have been avoided if there was a better understanding of what's actually going on with that individual. I have no problem if somebody wants to be proactive and say, I want like a medically important tier one assessment for mold in my house, which was is our way of saying a really upper level, like in-depth analysis of the home, right? It's very in hours at the house and lots of testing. But what if that person that had symptoms was being affected by something other than their environment? That person didn't have a mold exposure source that was coming from the environment. Maybe that quote unquote elevated level on one hand was from food or their diet. And or what if the issue was that that is not an accurate reading? That it says it's elevated, but actually it's normal. The you and I talked about this offline a lot more than maybe what we have in the first couple of episodes here. Limbic system, the PTSD, the overwhelm that people will experience just off of that comment. You have a mold issue, you're being exposed, you have biotoxin illness. What? Off of a urinary mycotoxin? What is it about a urinary mycotoxin test, regardless of the type of method of analysis used? Because they differ, like real time is different from mosaic in the type of analysis method to analyze the urine, blah, blah, blah. Is what is it that they're able to diagnose the person with that when part of how we as a species detox naturally through our urine? We get rid of things. And I'll summarize all that in a succinct point. We need more information about the sample because there are assumptions that are being made that are costing people a lot. And it's not just their money, it's not just their time, it's their sanity, it's everything else that's attached, which is just trying to live a happy life. And I don't think it shocks you in particular that I have a problem with that because I am sick of seeing our world when we're trying so hard to better understand exposure for mold, how it does differ from one we understand. It's not a perfect science. It becomes an art at some point, a judgment of pattern recognition and going, this appears to be this over this. But just to constant, just to go and do a urinary mycotoxin because you read something online as a clinician, for those who have done that, and then not know the answers to was this test actually meaningful? Could it actually be off? I'm starting to see that I've seen that influx of people who are confused. And so I'm wanting to shed light on some of the things, some of the good things we've seen with urinary mycotoxin testing, pattern recognition, trends over time. But I think the emphasis here, Mark's, no doubt, is on the concerns we have on that's limitations and what we don't know.

Dr. Mark Su 18:14

So I, you know, you and I both know that some things change in federal regulations on some levels, it feels to me. There's a lot, there's a lot more occurrences now where people are ordering tests on their own through various kinds of online systems or whatever. So last, I'm curious, in the last four or six months from in this moment anyway, are you are you seeing an uptick in people in the public contacting you or colleagues in the IEP community with a you're in mycotoxic test result that they somehow obtained on their own without without a practitioner? Yeah, still still increasing.

 Mike Schrantz 18:44

Yeah, well, from my vantage point, which again, I know I'm a small n equals number here. I'm not seeing millions of, I'm not observing everybody. But yes, I think what I'm trying to figure out is how it's happening. I I because I've never done it myself. I'm wondering if you just go to the website and order it or if you can have like a health coach order it for you who might not be an actual practicing clinician. But yes, we'll have it. And in fact, I'll have a client. I can, I'm thinking of one in particular that I got about a month ago where the lady said, Yeah, I was just curious. I've been doing my own research. I read this and I just wanted to do it just to see where I was at. And here it is. And it looks like I got okra toxin A in my urine, and I'm and so I'm being exposed. And it's that whole thing that I just mentioned before of trying to unravel what we know and what we don't know.

Dr. Mark Su 19:24

Yeah, so you touched on a two points. So if if you're tuning in here and you're a person who you've either ordered, obtained a test, and we're not, I'm not necessarily shading that or judging that, certainly not judging, criticizing that. It's just I don't really know how that's happening. I don't know what really is changed in regulations. Is ever it's basically just one of those pandemic downstream residual changes in our society. But whatever the case may be, if you're a person who you've done a urine mycotoxin testing on your own, and it's almost certainly going to be one of those three labs, and you're not sure how to interpret that, then yeah, these are important pieces that that Mike's already brought to the forefront here, where it's not as straightforward. I think that's fair to say, I think that's the bottom line is interpreting results is not as straightforward as we would like to believe. And it's not just as a lay public community, but even the practitioners, whether IEPs, even or human practitioners, it is it's just not that straightforward. So there are those technical details you mentioned, Mike, where the various laps between those three, how they determine what's normal or abnormal, those are questions we so for context, we've we had a whole presentation on that in our nonprofit organization's annual conference over a year ago. Really well done by our mutual colleague who really asked some really hard questions and then just presented some objective data as to how these labs are run, how these three labs conduct their testing. And it was just very, to say least, it was just very eye eye-opening for us. And in the end, I think I'm curious for you from your perspective, in the last, I don't know, half year or more, half year to year, you alluded to that there's a little bit. I have the same vibe myself that there seems to be, I'm hearing less of the more what's the word, exaggerated or strong opinion, or I don't want to say I don't know if exaggerated is the right word, but just more far spectrum comments by practitioners in email forums and otherwise, saying that this person has bought based on just a urine testing mycotoxin test alone, and they've been recommended or I'm recommending to them something about their environment or whatever. I'm not hearing that as much now. So I'm with you on that.

Lab Variability And Reference Ranges

 Mike Schrantz 21:14

Yeah, yeah. I think the awareness of being, and they're expensive too, right? It's nice to see that trend. And I'm really wanting to recognize that because that's the goal here is just to bring awareness and also to hold. Listen, these laboratories might be great, creating a really great option for, but we need more information. We need more transit, and it's not just in these laboratories. There's a lot of laboratories that offer other sorts of environmental testing that I'm familiar with that I wish were more full forward facing with their information because we're getting smarter and smarter. People are demanding evidence of integrity of an approach of a methodology. Because in today's world, it just feels like heck AI can create anything at once and just it sounds good. So it must be true. And so we're just desperate for validation. No, this sounds legitimate. This is Legitimate. And so part of that is just showing those control groups. And I I go back to your previous comment of that. The good news is I am seeing people more aware because when we start to talk about their urinary mycotoxin samples, they're almost starting to finish my sentences now. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I got that. Yeah, I know. Or yeah, we got we just as a general tool. And I think that we're heading in the right direction of awareness. But I also think it's not just awareness, it's about validation. It's is this an appropriate test? And are we using it appropriately? We, meaning the community, are we using it appropriately? Even the CDC mentions that they don't recommend use of it as it pertains to that and the use of antifungals. That can be a separate discussion for another time if we'd like. But it's not, this is not some bar napkin conversation that just you and I are having, Mark. Like it's well known in the industry, yet it seems to still be a very common method used when there's so many questions still being unanswered.

Dr. Mark Su 22:54

So let me go back to a previous question. So is it am I right that in the surviving mold community, urine mycotoxin testing is still not a thing? Was that correct?

 Mike Schrantz 23:03

Did you say in the forgive me in the surviving mole? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not. In fact, in 2019, 2019, Dr. Richie Schumacher and David Lark wrote a paper on urinary mycotoxin testing and the concerns that they had. It was like a 33-page document with 90 references or over 100 references. And basically what it was showing was the lack of a control group and all of that. So they are against it because of how it's being used, which is among other things that they're it's being used as a diagnostic tool, which is not good according to the people that use them. Is that what the lab's proposing? I don't know. Do what do you think, Mark? Do you think the laboratories are marketing it as a diagnostic tool or just a piece of evidence that can maybe help the clinician?

Dr. Mark Su 23:44

For me, it's one and the same. I think any lab producing some kind of test service, for me, I just look at that by definition as a diagnostic tool. Okay. But of course, the labs are not. The labs are not where the what's the word with the phrase, where the end, what run road starts and what one where one road stops and the next road starts, whatever that analogy phrase is, they're not making clay. Labs are not responsible for interpreting the results. So no matter who it is, whether it's a conventional lab, a hospital lab, Quest, Lab Corps, AREP, whoever it is, much less these functional medicine labs, they're not in the, they don't have the responsibility of, nor are they allowed to or do they want to, for all kinds of reasons, especially for liability's sake, be making interpretations. So they're just providing information. And then it's the practitioners or whoever who are supposed to be responsible for interpreting that and applying that information to the decision making for the client or patient. But you made a good point. We've talked about and you've illustrated here is that that's one of the one of the newer, one of the newer dilemmas that we're facing now, if we want to call that, is that there are now these streams and avenues where the lay public can get testing without a practitioner involvement. And then if there's no practitioner involved on the back end to interpret, then they're left to their own devices to DIY, do it yourself, and make decisions on that. And then as you alluded to, whether it's AI or social media, whatever, that's where a lot of the information is coming from. And I'm not judging you, that's just it's just that's what's happening. Yep, yeah.

 Mike Schrantz 25:04

Yeah. And and one thing too, I want to highlight is you said that it's not the laboratory's ability or rather desire, and I understand that part to interpret the results, totally agreed. But they're the ones in this case that we're focusing on that set the criteria for what is normal, what is elevated, baseline versus elevated. And that is also tricky because if the clinician who's quote unquote responsible for interpreting is basing their interpretation on what they think are reliable data, what's healthy controls versus what's affected, then that just has the snowball downstream negative adverse effect. And that was maybe to your point about the two roads example, just leads to more bad, potentially bad direction, guidance, treatment recommendations. There's patients out there that we're touching the tip of the iceberg when we talk about urinary mycotoxins as one subset of other tools out there, everything that should be critically reviewed. And in this particular topic, what I see is people, people that come to my step are not usually the, I'm not usually the first people they reach out. Like I'm not the first person they'll contact. I'm usually the I get the complex ones, the ones that have been dealing with chronic illness and issues for many years, decades. And as a result of that, you see their story. And a lot of times, too much to care for, I would say 30 to 40% of the population I get to see, they claim that their health has gotten worse because of the treatment they receive.

Dr. Mark Su 26:29

Wow. And we're talking about treatment in not in the conventional world.

Food, Provocation, And False Signals

 Mike Schrantz 26:32

No, we're talking like use of antifungals and things of that. And I want to be clear for the audience that I'm not making a blanket statement claim about antifungals. What I'm trying to illustrate is a topic of a clinician diagnosed a patient with their urinary mycotoxin result. And one way or the other, through some evolution of resolve all of that, they got them on a treatment program and then they felt good initially, and then they felt like crap and haven't been able, and then they had other complex issues. To guarantee that it came from the treatment issue is a great question, or to know for sure. But that's a pattern I see. And that strikes home for me because of having CIRS myself and going through the healing process and the journey and the uncertainty. And I had it easy compared to many people in a lot of ways, but was there so much overwhelm? And it's, are we destroying, not you and me per se, but is the community destroying lives too, because we're not being more responsible with the tools that are available? I while we were talking a moment ago, I went on one of those three websites to see if I could literally pay for a urinary mycotoxin test and I can just add it to my cart and send it and then get it done. And that's like incredible because it's that's just like giving keys to a four-year-old to go drive their vehicle. Seems irresponsible.

Dr. Mark Su 27:46

Yeah. So changes in the system, right? And then and then everyone has to catch up with how to process the results. And yeah, I love what you let's just go ahead and I know we've let's go ahead and be a little bit more specific. So some of the concerns that are questions at the least, some of the questions or concerns or issues with some of these tests are so well, let's I'm gonna pivot this way. So I I get patients asking me all the time, uh most of the patients I see in our brick and mortar, at least in the brick and mortar office, are on the fence or they're equal opportunists when it comes to pharma and non-pharma, prescriptions, non-prescriptions, and so in terms of treatment. And but questions I'll often be asked are what one common question is which one's gonna be better for me.

 Mike Schrantz 28:25

Of course.

Dr. Mark Su 28:26

Yeah. I don't know how to answer that. That's a tough one. Better for you in what way? And then and then sometimes the conversation comes around to being there's an insinuation or an inference that if it's non-pharma, then it's it's more natural and it's healthier for me, less likely to cause side effects or whatever else. But I frequently am always saying, hey, the thing is we just don't know what we don't know. So whether it's an herbal or if it's uh a nutraceutical vitamin or whatever else, like there isn't enough money in those arenas for the research to be done to meet the criteria of what would typically be done for pharma medications to be approved and be available in the public. So even though we might say, Oh, yeah, this prescription can cause these kinds of side effects, and we go, we don't have those kind of concerns with this herbal, let's say. But if we were to do enough research on it with and put enough money and whatever into it, like we might very well come up with this similar length or intensity of side effect profile that we just don't know right now. Now, pivoting that back into the lab testing with the urine testing, these labs, and to be clear, we're not neither you or I are judging and criticizing these labs. And we can come back to that in just a second here as we pivot into take-home points. But if the labs don't have to meet certain regulations similar to supplement companies not having to meet regulations, then hey, in some ways it's nice because we have ability to move the needle and explore directions that we and and create tools that we don't have in conventional medicine. That's a thumbs up. Yeah. But we just got to recognize there's some downsides too. And we've started to encounter some of that. We've started to unmask, and I think the practitioner community is becoming aware of some of those downsides, such as, hey, the as you alluded to, the sample size to create the number of people with results to create a reference range of what's normal might be multiple fold scales different than what is typically done for a typical lab. Yeah. Or what is, as you said, what's considered normal or abnormal, what do we, what is a lay per a lay person might say? What do you mean by that? Typically, like a lab would have to say, would run, let's pick up a number, 100,000 samples on people who feel completely fine under as defined by A, B, C, D, E, F G, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then if we want to run those another 100,000 samples on people who they feel sick, as defined by A, B, C, D, E, F, G, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if they haven't run those numbers, much less they didn't delineate between getting enough information as to how sick or are you, it's a hodgepodge. And now we don't have a real sense as strong of a sense of, as you said, what's really normal in a person who's asymptomatic or someone who has or hasn't been exposed to a sick environment for how long. So the information that we're making decisions on becomes skewed, can be skewed. Right. And then when we're starting for that skewed base point, and then we're making even stronger recommendations one way or the other. It's just magnified errors being made in one direction or the other, potentially.

Pairing Toxins With Inflammation Markers

 Mike Schrantz 31:00

And that that issue of healthy controls is something that I would love to see what these labs were doing to provide those range of reference, those reference ranges of what is considered to be this is normal for a healthy individual, this is elevated. Not to plug's not the right word here. No one's making any money here necessarily. But the paper that Dr. Richie Shoemaker wrote in 2019, it was called Urinary. I had to look it up here, urinary mycotoxins, a review of contaminated buildings and food in search of biomarkers, separating sick patients from controls, a mouthful. One of the things that he brought up in that one was that he did look at what were worldwide studies all over showing contamination of urine with mycotoxins and metabolites and healthy controls from over like almost 3,000 people. And that's a that's still even so a small subset of a larger question. But the whole point was that even people that were quote unquote considered to be healthy controls had mycotoxins in their urine and range from 60 to 100%, meaning without going too deep into the data, basically a majority of people of the controls had some levels of urinary. Some of them had a mycotoxin, and some of them had a significant amount, which obviously the elephant in the room is if is that truly somebody that's a healthy control or is there something that needs to be recalibrated? I hit this point hard because it's the same issue in our world with the environmental side when it comes to testing for mold in homes.

Dr. Mark Su 32:25

I was just getting ready to say the same. I was just getting ready to say that.

 Mike Schrantz 32:27

Yeah, it's the same thing. It's not, this is not picking on the lab, it's picking on our community because our community is wisening up. Everybody's okay, allowed to be Richie Shoemaker was a pioneer. There was a time when he was practicing his protocol before it was published. But eventually you get to a point where the community says, we require more of you. We ask more of you. We you we want you to show us the data. You got to play, and these are my words being a little bit animated because you know how I roll. You were allowed to play around as your little pioneer and do a little bit of research and be a little bit risky and figure things out because your heart was in the right place. That's great. This machine now that you've built is a well-oiled machine, doing pretty good financially. Y'all need to do the research. And that's what we're talking about is just let's answer some of these questions about what is truly a healthy control. Let's talk about the issue of repeatability. How is it that we can send a sample of identical urine sample to the same lab in sterile vessels and the result come back so different that it would be, according to the lab, the difference between a passing urinary mycotoxin test and a failing one? How is that possible? I've seen that happen, and I know I'm not the only one. And so those questions need to be answered because not to hit this point overtly hard, is it it has downstream effects, not to mention the cost, not to mention the limbic system emotional roller coaster that you, if you're listening as a patient, might go through. Let me ask you a question of those listening. If you've used urinary mycotoxin sampling and the first time that you did one and your doctor came to you and they said you have urinary mycotoxins, did you feel you fork? Did you feel happy like you just won the lottery? Or was there a feeling of concern, some negative emotion, some negative energy? I'm guessing it was the latter. And then think about all the decisions that were made afterwards. This is not light for you to call up your clinician and yell at them and say you don't know what you're doing, because a lot of clinicians that Mark and I work with do actually have a very responsible, ethical way of using it as part of the picture, but not the entire picture, as they're trying to figure out in their own learning of what's the best way to treat you. But what I want you to focus on is the potential of some people to be treated solely off of one measurement. Then the negative effects, great if it's positive. The problem is that I'm not talking about too many positive ones because what I normally see are, and again, please don't reference me as the knower of all people who've used urinary mycotoxins. But in my observations, I see more people complain about them when they don't work. And the people that are promoting the success and the benefits of them, I keep asking the same question, which is can you show us the data so that we can learn more? I it's all about truth for the community, Mark. It's about letting them see it so that they feel like the time, money, and effort that they're spending is worth it on this type of test.

Science, Uncertainty, And Nuance

Dr. Mark Su 35:07

Yeah, no, agreed. Yeah, fully agreed. Yeah, it's kind of like putting it into context. I've we've had this conversation within our organization, colleagues within the organization, for myself outside the organization. Anyone even right now asking me, so Mark, do you so what are you saying? Do you use these urine mycotoxin tests? Yeah, I do regularly. And we both know colleagues who would probably roll their eyes at me. Yeah, sure. And it's but I think it's as you alluded to, it's as you just said, it's how is it being how is it being used in interpretation? Yeah. Like within within whether it's our brick and mortar, but it's definitely across the board in root seek. When we're evaluating patients, bring this full circle back to the original comment about the SERGE's testing and protocol, right? Yeah. The markers are about the inflammatory response of the person's body to whatever in this case we're talking about mold toxins, fungal toxins. We never do that urine mycotoxin test alone, and we never make exaggerated claims or comments based on that with limited other information. I think the real big, I think perhaps as a sort of like window and summary of what we're getting at is this is just one of many tools in the toolbox. And trying to decide it's like that illustration of the four guys who are blindfolded or blind and they're all touching different part of the elephant and your openness, right? Yeah. Where it's not fair to make not only conclusions but recommendations on too limited information. And this, these urine mycotoxin tests are in them alone, independently in isolation as a standalone. That's really thin ice to be using that alone. And so when you either when you combine them, especially with not only just information, actually talking to somebody, which is that's the big part that's missing, right? When people are just ordering testing on their own. Again, not a judge, it's just that everyone, those folks are on their own trying to figure this out. And that's just that's a really difficult place to be, given how much we know about how complex the situation is. Yes. So there's the information about how you feel and how long it's been going on, and then your chronology correlation with where you live, what's going on with your environment. Is that even known at all? What do you, what can you tell? Have you had an IEP? Check it out, et cetera. And then there's also, but then back to the person beyond the testing of the just the urine toxins, then we regularly combine that with those SURS shoemaker inflammatory markers to say, do we see evidence that your body's responding to it also? And if it all matches up, the easy example, right? Like the folks you see who are more complex and they for you like your second, third, fourth opinion because they there's complex cities. If they've got urine toxins and they've got inflammatory markers that are in that kind of like SERF protocol, and they've got a sick environment that they've been in for a meaningful amount of time, not just a couple weeks or whatnot, it all matches up. Ding and ding. All right, straightforward. Yep. But you strip all that away.

 Mike Schrantz 37:32

Like a duck acts like a duck, you get to a point where you have enough reasonable evidence to say, does that help you, Mark? I've been wanting to ask you this. Does it change how you treat the person, or is it more of a sequencing treatment than you using one binder over another? I don't mean to go eight levels deep. I'm what I'm really looking for is you use urinary mycotoxin as a piece of the pie, not the pie. And it helps you ultimately with type of treatment and sequencing of treatment. Is that a is that fair to say? I'm sorry, let's repeat that last part again. So you use urinary mycotoxin sampling in your practice from time to time, not as the diagnostic tool, but as a ancillary piece of data to help support maybe your hypothesis. I wonder if this person, I think this person might be having an environmental exposure. And if the, and that's what I heard you allude to right now. My question to you is do by doing that, it helps you, it's a question, it helps you with the type of treatment, like what exactly you're going to treat that person with, and also the order of how you might treat them. Maybe there's a focus that you need to take care of this before. That's my question is where's the value? Does the value of using urinary mycotoxin sampling in your practice is to help you with the type of treatment and the order of treating?

Guidance For Patients And Clinicians

Dr. Mark Su 38:47

Yeah, so you're right. That's for those who are practitioners listening in, there's a lot of levels that we're not going to get into here on controversies and debates, we'll call it around mold illness in general, much less treating mold illness and beyond, even beyond the urine mycotoxins testing. So for me, no, it's not shifting how or what I'm using to treat per se. A lot of this is still just messaging to a patient because in the same way for me with those urine tests, where there's other reasons it could be cleaner than it might otherwise be. We didn't get into the there's also the topic, just to touch on it of some practitioners have patients do what we call provocation, right? Yeah, no prep needed, just pee in the cup and you're done. And so the question is then principle is if a person doesn't detox well and they're not, as you alluded to, right? We detox to our urine. If they're if they don't detox well and they're not letting out that stuff in the urine, then are you going to get a cleaner negative result than you would have if you would have provoked them to detox more effectively? All these other details that become tricky, and this is especially again back, even more important for people who are ordering testing on their own, that there's a lot of complexity here. So your question for me is a lot of it is still there. I've seen people who have serived markers that look cleaner than I would have expected. Right. But then when we but their environment sick and they have, let's say, mycotoxin, the urine mycotoxin is abnormal, we treat them for mold illness and they get better. I've seen people the other way. They we know they are in a sick environment and their surf blood test inflammatory markers are high, but their urine toxin is negative or cleaner than I cleaner than I would have expected. We treat them also and they get better. So it's just for me, it's not predictable enough to only lean on one or the other between looking at the toxins themselves that are that can cause inflammation versus the inflammatory markers themselves as the response. You know, neither are 90 plus percent reliable enough for me to just lean on one or the other. So I just tend to do them in combination. And it and because there's a lot of gray in between that we can't get into here, we gave easy examples of when everything lines up or when everything doesn't, or there's too little that doesn't, but there's a lot of gray in between. So what do you do when there's a little bit of this, a little bit of that? And that's where a lot of that nuanced decision making comes into play, both with you with IP or us as people clinic. And so it it is a story of, as you said, a little more information is at the risk of there being too much information and having to sort through that and make sense of it all. I'd rather err on the side of too many markers and making sense of that when they don't necessarily all add up rather than possibly making wrong decisions on too little information.

 Mike Schrantz 41:13

Yeah. When you started off when I asked the question, you started off with the term messaging. And I think that hit the bullseye where it's I just want to give more information, not just to myself, but for the patient, and arguably doing it in a fair, which I know you do a great job at doing because I've known you for years and how we even communicate with each other is that you're very transparent, fair about what you know, what you don't know. And that's and I know that for some patients, by the way, especially those, and I was one of them that want black and white. Yes, no, don't give me maybe so. I want a pill, I want to press one button, I want everything to get better. I understand how frustrating that can be when you're dealing with treatment, when you're dealing with an illness that you just want to get over. That being said, the good news is there's a lot of modalities that will probably all roads lead to Rome and get you to a better state than when you're at. I think it's I think the net benefit is to have a clinician like Mark who's going to be transparent and open and talk to you about what these tests can do, what they can't do. Mark's own and Mark Mark, as an example of a clinician, his own limitations of comfort of I've seen this and I've seen that. So that's why we're doing both. That to me, as a patient, means so much more than somebody who's just blindly going down the track of just one test method. And to your point about provocation, this idea that some doctors believe in provoking, getting out the mycotoxins to therefore say that there it is in the urine. So you have it isn't such a great topic or subtopic because now the test result might be more qualitative in nature than quantitative in nature. Meaning, for those of you who maybe don't understand that, is qualitative means that we can definitely say that you have mycotoxins in your urine, but quantity matters because everyone's gonna have a little bit, because you eat food, your diet's gonna have exposure to mycotoxins, normal breathing, you have exposure to mycotoxins, like from just the normal we live on earth, you're surrounded by mold mycotoxins. You're gonna have some levels in there. And so when you provoke, if you if you manipulate the body to push it out more than it otherwise normally would, it could also make it look like you have a huge problem when you don't have a huge problem. A couple different points to make, and all of that leads to the same main point, which is we want to learn more about how we can utilize these urinary mycotoxin testing options. And part of that is having the labs educate us on what have been their healthy controls, how they went about doing it, how they established us their their reference ranges. And then just a more general thing to educate the community at large that it's not a diagnostic tool. It's not meant to say you have CIRS or you have biotoxin illness. That's not the purpose of that test. And there are still people out there that believe that's what. It's intended to do.

Dr. Mark Su 44:01

Yeah, the comment you made in there reminds me of during the pandemic. I mean, that that was like shattered the glass for so many people, right? Just obviously on multiple levels. But the true nature of science, the evolving science, where we don't know what we don't know was full frontal, 100%, right? And then it just got so it got so gaslit on the binary kind of schools of thought and then the politicization around everything. It'd be that's that that's where things got really nutty. But that's the true nature of science where we don't understand things. And so we work from a we work from a hypothesis. It doesn't matter if for you, a hypothesis going into assessing a building or us assessing a person's symptoms or illness, you work from a place and then you test the theory, do some testing, and then try to support your argument or you're ruling it out. That's what conventional medicine is really good at, is ruling out. We ruled out this, we ruled out that, we ruled out that. Yeah, but I'm still sick. So I show symptoms. Now what? We ruled out that you're good. You can go home. That's what everybody talks about. I hate that. Like I go to the yard, but I still have this pain. Okay, what did they do for you? They did nothing. Well, they just ruled everything out. They did a whole funny test. And they said I'm healthy as a horse, but I I swear I'm gonna burst right now.

 Mike Schrantz 45:02

It's not funny, but it's funny because it's so true how many of us go through that. Back to you, Mark. Sorry.

Dr. Mark Su 45:07

No, it's coming, right? So it's the this is the I think this is as a sort of like wine summary. We talk about, we talk about on this podcast. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, both conventional medicine, but especially functional medicine. And I'm thinking for me, the urine mycotoxin thing testing, it's there's some good, there's some bad, but we're not blanket statement or absolute one end of the spectrum one way or the other. I do use them, it's just not in isolation, but there's a little bit of ugly here. But it's also the nature of functional medicine. And you stepped out of the conventional IEP world 11 years ago, 2014, right? So you're well versed with that ugly functional medicine. And it's not a ugly doesn't necessarily mean bad. It might feel like that, but it just means it's a lot of work to constantly be learning and evolving and changing, shifting, changing and being adaptable, right? That's what happened in the pandemic. This is what we're gonna do. No, wait a second, we're gonna do this. No, wait a second, we're gonna do this. And that just drives everybody nuts, to your point. We like things as humans, and in our society right now, where there's so much noise of everything in life, everything is so freaking busy. We would like just straightforward answers and not have to deal with decision fatigue.

 Mike Schrantz 46:08

Yeah, there it is. Decision fatigue.

Caution, Clarity, And Next Steps

Dr. Mark Su 46:10

That's I would like to not have to have decision fatigue on all these other aspects of my life that I really don't care that much about. Yeah, but a decision is being required of me. Something as simple as which apple do you want? Do you want the Granny Smith? Do you want the green ones? BG, come on, those are good choices. Yeah. There's too many choices. Yeah. But unfortunately, that's just not the case. That's just not reality, unfortunately, in functional medicine and the urine mycotoxin tests are a real epitome of that. So thanks for highlighting that. And and we can't get into all the details because there's just too much, but it I think the closure point, all right. I don't know, for me, and then back to you. For me, the closure point is it's a bigger picture, making decisions on limited information and much less something that just doesn't have doesn't have more research and data behind it than we would like. Not it's not a shame, it's just what it is. If I'm in those companies, I don't have the money to pour in for more data. If it's helping people on some level, great. You know, I've got to be careful. I want to be careful, I want to be mindful and careful about the downsides, but what are we gonna do? Wait 10 years until we have more data? And then all those people who are sick, they're they don't want to wait 10 years, right? So there's gotta be some kind of compromise and balance in between. And ultimately, there's just more mindfulness and more complexity, I hate to say it, involved in this topic and with this illness, as well as that testing, just having good guidance matters to create clarity before we create more that we have to deconstruct later. Because you talked about that last couple of times, how much you have to often deconstruct glassing and all that. So that's where the further down the road we go with misinformation, the more we have to deconstruct, and that gets really hard.

 Mike Schrantz 47:32

I'm with you. I feel like urinary mycotoxins certainly have a place or at the table for use. I think that there's still stuff we are learning about your about mycotoxins and their true role in exposure. And that's it's not just an automatically don't even bring up the word mycotoxins, you don't know what you're talking about. Absolutely, it should be at the table for discussion, but that's it's just it. It needs to be at the table for discussion, not assumption. And assumption is it's a good, accurate test. We know it. Well, how do you know it? What published control data do you have to show us that? We'd love to learn, not judge, but we are being careful and responsible because we can affect the lives of the people around us, and especially clinicians have a Hippocratic oath that they follow that to try to do no harm. And part of that is the footwork involved. And you said it earlier, we're constantly learning and learning. I'm that's a point, by the way, Mark, related side note. But part of, I think, the challenges with clinicians is that concern of if they have to admit that they're not God, that they don't know everything, that they made a mistake, that they need to change their angle. And there's a little bit of mike's micism, PTSD coming into this, but is this feeling that they can't even admit that maybe they're gonna change their practice for fear of repercussion from past patients or something to that thing. And that's not what this is about. A lot of people have changed their treatment modalities. We doctors used to say that certain levels of cholesterol was fine. They used to say long ago that smoking was good for your health. And we learn as we go getting the latest information, but we do have legitimate concerns within the specific talk of urinary mycotoxins of the limitations that we're currently asking. And those limitations, to summarize it, is healthy control groups. What are they? Can you publish them? And we're talking third-party publications. We're not talking an in-house study. That's great. That's how you start, you got to do something, right? You got to be that pioneer. We're talking about independent stuff that can be reviewed and critiqued. That way there is a sense of trust and integrity. That is to say, that you believe the data is accurate and meaningful. The other thing is what you said, it's a part of the picture, it's not the picture. And if you are a patient listening to this and you do want to do a urinary mycotoxin sample, especially on your own, because apparently, as I just verified this morning, you can do that. You can just go and order it. Please proceed with caution. It's very akin, very similar to patients doing their own mold sampling for their home without any context of how to interpret it and assuming the lab interprets it, which they don't. And then all of a sudden you find yourself in a rabbit hole, you'll get yourself all worked up. And I don't want you to get worked up because I care about you and I've been there. My biggest issue I dealt with was PTSD. So I can relate to that specific topic. And what I can tell you is you don't need to go there. It's analysis paralysis, it's overwhelming. Slow down, work with people you trust, go to Root Seek, find some help because you're going to get honest information, you're going to get the latest and greatest. And if there's something that they don't know, they'll tell you. And that's what you want is you want honest truth at this point so that you just don't go down those rabbit holes that could lead to because you might be going again. Remind me, what's the overall arching concern? The overarching concern is wasting the patient's time, money, and effort.

Dr. Mark Su 50:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, great. I think in another layer of like window here is so if you're listening in and you're sitting there thinking, okay, so I've done a urine mycotoxin test, whether you got it yourself, somebody ordered for you, it doesn't matter. And I've been told I have mold or I'm diagnosing myself or concluding to myself that I have a mold issue. And especially if you're thinking I need I've been told or I'm reading online, I need to move, throw away everything in my home. Are you Mike and Mark? Are you telling me that's not true? Are you telling me this test is useless? No. First of all, kudos for digging beyond conventional medicine because a lot of people don't even have the courage or the self-advocacy to go beyond what, as you said, what the doctors are saying. I think we all could, I'd like to believe all the doctors nowadays can just okay, we don't know everything. Okay, it's okay. Yeah, there's so much information on the internet, right? Yeah, but but it does it, it takes gunction, it takes effort, initiation to motivation to advocate for yourself. So good for you. But uh, there's some reality here, there's some ugliness in all this, and so that's just don't get trapped in binary thinking. Don't get trapped in binary thinking and gaslighting that happens in healthcare, definitely happens online, happens with this topic of mold illness for sure, happens definitely with this topic of urinary micro mycotoxins. Mike and I think in a little less nowadays than maybe a half year ago, say, but but still happening. So just we're just caution. I love that word there. Just be cautious. On the other hand, if you're a practitioner and you're sitting there thinking, this just freaking complicated my life. Because that's how I feel when I'm at conferences a lot, right? I'm just like, oh my God, what am I what do I gotta learn now? And I thought I understood this, and now this is deconstructing my thinking. Like, how do I pivot? Hey, if you're feeling fuzzy, confused, trying to make use of this year, mycotoxin testing, like you're in good company. We've all been there. It's okay to take a deep breath. And just as we've said, as I've said with a lot of the colleagues I've either mentored or broke shoulders with, especially for a newer functional practitioner, you just gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable. And when you think you've got it figured out, just know probably in the next three months, you're gonna feel really uncomfortable again because it's just a cycle that keeps happening.

 Mike Schrantz 52:24

But it's that and it's that comfort of knowing that's the norm. Because if from my vantage point, Mark, yeah, because if I know that I'm not in it alone and that's the normal protocol, then I feel like I'm doing the right thing because it is scary for some clinicians and going through the seven stages of emotional like grief right now, maybe perhaps, including anger and frustration, because maybe there is some in-house results that they've done where they have seen value in these samples and improvement in patient outcomes. And that's great. Uh, the problem with it is the conversation is at large, is that I can't take a subset population of people I've seen uh and work with from an environmental standpoint and then blanket paintbrush over everybody else and assume it must be the same way. And that's the concern. And it really boils down to an open mind. Pride and ego plague every industry. I used to remember as a kid, I used to go, why do adults have such a hard time admitting when they're wrong? Because I had no problem when I was a kid admitting it. As I've gotten older, become an adult and a parent, I uh although the term is I understand now. And I feel it, I recognize that. And what I'm here to tell you is that let's not, we don't have to make it a thing. Like everyone here is very intelligent, they're very smart, we're all trying to do our best. And part of functional diagnostic medicine is that you are the tip of the spear. You're not someone, you're not working with a protocol that's established and has diagnostic codes that you can just copy and paste. You're dealing in many ways. You are dealing with tip of the spear stuff. And so what we're trying to tell you is this is tip of the spear stuff. And start asking the right questions to put yourself because the only thing that you that you can do that's worse than perhaps using it is using it and not with patients, is using it and not explaining to the patients those limitations. Because that could come back on you from a liability standpoint. And we want you to be educated. But it is very normal to have the uncomfortable. I'm the same way. About every three to six months, there's gonna be some another environmental sample thing that comes up. And I feel, oh my gosh, what do I have to learn now? This is what I signed up for. And if it's what you feel that you're being signed up for, then do the work, do the thing. And there's great mark, you might plug ICI or other organizations, but there are so many good resources out there to get good information that you don't feel is just marketing hype that someone's doing for clicks.

Dr. Mark Su 54:32

Yeah. So if you're again if you're a practitioner, yeah, at the very least, I think we would agree that just be mindful and cautious and balanced. If you're if it's if this is somewhat new to you, then definitely we would discourage getting too overconfident or exaggerated in what you're messaging to patients. It's really just a matter of recognizing that there's more complexity than we might even understand there to be wherever we are in our professional skill set and journey right now. Because the whole point is we were trying to avoid gaslighting patients and then having to go down roads that are really hard to bring people back from and deconstruct thinking, the limbic system, the p the trauma thinking and stuff like that. Just just I think you used a good term earlier, just slowing things down a little bit and not getting too ahead of ourselves, uh, especially messaging to the patients. Yep. So obviously this is something we dive deep with into, dive deep into with our patients at RootSeeks. We yeah, we definitely help people map out mold-related illness step by step. Because again, our for us, clarity is a big part of healing in medicine. So if this is if this resonates with you, you're feeling like you needed a second look or first look, a partner to on your healing path. So again, yeah, you can find us at rootseekhealth.com. We'd be honored to work with you. But otherwise, yeah, we really just want you to be better. Mike and I both, we all of us, the whole RootSeek team, we want people to be better regardless. If we're part of that journey, it's our privilege, honor privilege and honor. If we're not part of that journey and you get better, we don't care. That's that's what we just want people to be better. Thanks for joining us again on this episode of the Functional Medicine Reality Podcast. That'd be awesome for you as a next step. Clicking the link in the show notes, quick help quiz kind of designed to help uncover like what's what your body mate might be needing right now and how we can best support you, as well as some feedback on content for our future planning. But again, our purpose of this podcast is creating clarity among all that noise of all the excess information that's in out in the internet sphere, social media sphere, beyond all the complexity of what we just talked about today between you and I, Mike, here with social media podcasts, emails, friends, family, all that stuff, right? So it's the reality of functional medicine. It's the good mostly, sometimes bad, occasionally some ugly. The ugly is kind of what we talked about today. The world of functional medicine is diverse, it's powerful, there's all kinds of hope and potential with all those tools, but the practice of functional medicine is far from a one-size-fits-all, which is a message you brought forth several times today, Mike. So thanks for that. What might work for you or me might not work for someone else, and vice versa. Sometimes it might even do more harm, as you alluded to. I was a shocking insight you gave me about 30, 40% of your clients. They're kind of like perhaps been felt worse being treated in conventional medicine, but even the functional medicine world. So as you said, we're goal is to help people lock in on what's worth your time, effort, and money and what's not, so you can be more efficient and getting better or faster. And rootseekhealth.com is where you can get some help from us as needed at your discretion to schedule discovery call and be our team will be ready to help you in any kind of way that we can and support you.

 Mike Schrantz 57:14

Thank, Mike. A time, brother. That was good today. It's a deep one. Thanks for the opportunity.

Dr. Mark Su 57:18

Yeah. A lot of the rabbit holes we avoided because it gets even messier.

 Mike Schrantz 57:21

But hey, look, if we get feedback, I'd love to dive deeper where there's interest. Happy to do it. I wanted to paint just I just wanted to open the door. Fair.

Dr. Mark Su 57:28

No, fair enough. I'm glad you said that. Fair enough. If we get enough for those of you who are in that world enough, whether a practitioner or patient, if there's enough feedback on that, we'll open those doors. We're just not really sure how far to get into it. There's so much to get into. Yeah. You're a wealth of expertise, as always, Mike. So thanks for your friendship and your your service to the community. And of course, just being here on the podcast.

 Mike Schrantz 57:46

So we just served, brother. Thank you.

Dr. Mark Su 57:47

All right. Talk to you next time. All right. Sounds good.

 Mike Schrantz 57:50

So just the way you like to