From: judgebean23x@gmail.com   
      
   Surviving Mold   
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   Mary Ackerley: The Brain on Fire: The role of toxic mold in triggering   
   psychiatric symptoms   
      
   Mary Ackerley: The Brain on Fire: The role of toxic mold in triggering   
   psychiatric symptoms   
   Editor’s Note: Dr. Mary Ackerley is an integrative psychiatrist who recently   
   obtained certification in the Shoemaker Protocol used to treat b   
   otoxin-associated illness. She did her M.D. at the University of Maryland; her   
   medical residency at Johns    
   Hopkins; her M.D.H. at the American Medical College of Homeopathy; and her   
   undergraduate degree at Harvard University. She practices in Tucson. The   
   following is an edited, slightly shortened transcript of a recent talk she   
   gave to a group of physicians    
   and researchers interested in the health effects of toxic mold.   
      
   I get asked all the time, “How did a psychiatrist get interested in   
   mold?â€�  My interest stems from my clinical experience. As an integrative   
   psychiatrist, I attract people who weren’t helped by traditional meds. They   
   go to their doctors, they’re    
   given some Zoloft or Prozac or Xanax. It doesn’t help and often makes them   
   feel worse, so they seek out someone like me, who’s willing to work with   
   different methods.   
      
   Although people complain of depression and anxiety, I often find that fatigue   
   and muscle and joint pain are the strongest complaints. Those complaints are   
   usually ignored by traditional busy family practitioners because they lump   
   them all together under    
   the heading “depression.â€�   
      
   I was doing a CME credit on depression, and the case study was a woman with   
   joint and muscle pain, particularly in the back, fatigue, anxiety and   
   depression. I was supposed to learn to diagnose all these somatic complaints   
   as depression.  But in fact, I    
   do the opposite.   
      
   Eventually, I began to realize that I was attracting some patients who   
   considered themselves mold patients. They came to me with strange labs and   
   even stranger protocols. I was pretty traditional in looking at it, and I’d   
   say, “I don’t know what    
   this stuff means.â€� Then I’d start to work on their depression and anxiety.   
      
   I grew up on Long Island on the East coast, and I thought that mold was   
   natural and wasn’t a big deal. Every basement smelled moldy, didn’t they?    
   But I was kind of curious, and eventually, one of my patients gave me one of   
   Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker’s    
   books.   
      
   First experience treating mold   
      
   One day, a patient that I’d known pretty well for a few years arrived really   
   late for her appointment. She was a woman in her seventies and she was usually   
   pretty well put together. Now, however, she was disheveled and confused. She   
   told me she couldn†  
   ™t even remember how to get to the office, which was very strange. She’d had   
   the same problem with another physician and drove around the block for an   
   hour, yet couldn’t remember how to get to his office, which she’d visited   
   several times before.   
      
   I was concerned. She’d been seeing me for mild depression and a tremor.   
   I’d recommended some supplements that had been helping with the depression,   
   but the tremor hadn’t improved.   
      
   She mentioned that over the past few weeks, she’d seen a few other doctors.   
   She had referred herself to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist because her   
   sinusitis was acting up, and to a dermatologist because she’d developed a   
   strange rash on her shins.   
    She also had some aches and pains.   
      
   I was so concerned that I made a note to call her sons to discuss moving her   
   into assisted living.   
      
   I asked if anything new was happening. She said the only thing that had   
   changed in her life was that she’d decided to renovate her house. As the   
   walls were being torn out, she smelled mold, and workers had found mold behind   
   several walls.  I thought, †  
   œOh, okay, mold. I’ve heard of this before.â€�  Finally it occurred to me   
   that maybe this was a mold patient.   
      
   We read Dr. Shoemaker’s book Mold Warriors together. When we found the list   
   of the symptoms, she said, “Oh, I have ice pick painsâ€� and “I have brain   
   fog, and I’ve been urinating a lot, and my stomach’s been hurting.â€� In   
   fact, she’d made    
   an appointment to see a gastrointestinal specialist to get a workup for   
   stomach pains.   
      
   She presented to me with confusion, severe brain fog and increased depression.   
   But she had multiple symptoms and had seen many doctors now. Nobody had been   
   able to help her with anything.  We read a little further in Dr. Shoemaker’s   
   book, and I said, †  
   œCholestyramine seems pretty innocuous to use, so let’s try it.â€� I gave   
   her a prescription for cholestyramine (CSM) and told her to take it three to   
   four times a day.   
      
   She came back three weeks later and I saw a different person. It was   
   startling. She was on time for her appointment, looking alert and put   
   together. She was coherent and neatly dressed. The only thing that had changed   
   was adding cholestyramine. I was    
   impressed that something that I was calling pre-dementia had been completely   
   eradicated.   
      
   Inflammation and psychiatry   
      
   I got more interested in mold and began to read Dr. Shoemaker’s work to   
   learn about biotoxin illness. After learning how to do these strange labs, I   
   found that a high percentage of my integrative psychiatric patients had some   
   degree of biotoxin illness.   
     They had haplotypes that meant they were susceptible to becoming ill after   
   mold exposure and/or elevated cytokine levels.   
      
   That wasn’t anything that I’d ever been taught in medical school or   
   continuing education, or in any of the alternative educational experiences   
   that I’d pursued. I became fascinated and began to explore the   
   evidence-based literature for some    
   explanation.   
      
   What I found is that neuroinflammation — which is mediated by a variety of   
   mechanisms including cytokines — is widely documented in the psychiatric   
   literature. Despite that, most clinicians don’t know about it.   
      
   One fascinating thing I’d like to point out: Dr. Shoemaker has often said   
   that it’s about 25% of the population is susceptible to biotoxin-associated   
   illness. When you add up who’s been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, it   
   too adds up to about    
   25% of the population.  Is that a coincidence? Perhaps.  But it’s a very   
   interesting coincidence to me. Because there’s an extensive, robust line of   
   research that neurotransmitter theory alone is insufficient to explain most   
   psychiatric illness,    
   although it does sell SSRIs quite well.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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