what I don’t get is: why do others stay healthy when I get sick? I’ve never lived alone and I have never been abstinent... But I'm the only one who got ill with ME. So I don't think mycotoxins alone (!) are the culprit. Maybe in concert with other factors (that my family members, flatmates, friends, partners didn't have)
A good question, but it should be the beginning of an investigation, rather than being a challenge to the mold theory which is taken as a refutation.
Most scientists working on me/cfs take seriously the idea of environmental toxins or stressors of various kinds as part of the group of plausible causes. Robert naviaux writes about these in his research on the cell danger response. Paul Cheney wrote about this.
Have you guys heard the term canary in the coal mine ? People used to send canaries down into the coal mine bc they're sensitive to things like gas leaks , toxic air etc . If the canary came back healthy they'd go in, if it died or was sickened this was a warning that something was wrong. I think of people with this illness as canaries. I'm not sure if we are genetically more susceptible to whatever it is that makes us sick , or if we just have some kind of prenatal /in utero exposure to toxins that makes us a bit weaker and more susceptible, or if we have immune issues from birth that are moderate but asymptomatic until a nasty infection /exposure , or if there is just a lifetime of exposures and infections adding up stress on the body until something breaks. There are many possible explanations for why some people who get (x infection) or [y environmental exposure] become chronically ill and many don't. What I do know is that the people who don't get me/cfs from those things often still become unhealthy in more subtle ways.
For example, out of all of the people I know from school and non illness related activities and friend groups, almost none of them are free of mental or physical health issues. Two or three out of like thirty people I think are really thriving.
Many of the people who are unwell have adhd or depression or anxiety and you may say "those aren't physical health issues , its not comparable to me/cfs". To which I would counter , me/cfs isn't psychological, but many "psych" illnesses may have more of a physiological/organic nature than we know. I mean there are cases of schizophrenia improving with minocycline treatment, or depressed patients having high cytokines. There are studies in which adhd is higher in children exposed to pcbs, petroleum byproducts polluting big parts of former industrial zones esp. In the rust belt. I believe that so called psychiatric illnesses are often caused by toxic exposure and issues with the microbiome. I think that they involve immunological and neuroinflammatory and metabolic issues. I don't think these illnesses are solely about a few neurotransmitters and/or about oedipal complexes.
What I think is that people who are the most susceptible have really intense illnesses involving every body system and intense metabolic changes and inflammation and often even tissue damage , as in the cases of people with joint damage leading to cci or other spinal problems. But people who don't get things like me/cfs or cci or really severe illness are often having depression and adhd and anxiety andbsubclinical cognitive deficits caused by these problems.
Some of the people I know from school who don't have me/cfs ended up with bad gut issues, suicidal depression and anxiety. My sister, who grew up in the same house as me, doesn't have me/cfs , but has bad adhd , bad mcas (which was only diagnosed after I exhorted her to go to a specialist --regular docs missed that), etc. When she is in mold she reacts too , it's just that she doesn't have PEM, this is the main thing that separates her from me. But we both feel it.
She didn't know she was affected until she went to good air with me as a caregiver and then unmasked. It's like if someone eats gluten all the time they can't tell if it's affecting them bc they are exposed to it constantly. What we did is the equivalent of eliminating gluten for awhile and then reintroducing it and getting a clear reaction.
So now I know my sister reacts to this stuff despite not having me/cfs, and while we may share genetics we also shared an environment
The other people in that environment, the rest of my family, all have health problems. Mostly mental but some physical. Blood pressure snd heart issues , major bouts of anger /rage, depression, anxiety, anorexia nervous, etc. And while none of the others are as clearly convinced as my sister who is my carer, they have noted that when they were elsewhere they felt better.
Fhis isn't some perfect thesis statement but it's a start to explaining why I think some are susceptible and some seem not to be. BTW there are lots of chronic illnesses increasing in prevalence.
For example :
https://atomicchesterton.blogspot.com/2021/03/notes-at-end-times-part-i.html?m=1
