When Your Body Is Collapsing and Nobody Can Tell You Why
Mold, minerals, iron, and one young woman's inspiring recovery
A Moment with Dr. Stillman
Kenna was well one day, and unable to stand the next. Severe pain behind her eye was crippling. She would get dizzy and feel like she was about to pass out after just a few moments of standing. Her joints hurt so badly she struggled to hold a water bottle or press the gas pedal while driving. She had constant stomach pain, dizziness, nausea, headaches, and a strange sour taste in her mouth that made eating miserable.
She was attending chiropractic college, newly married, and she had gone from excellent health to a health crisis virtually overnight. Her symptoms were so severe that she dropped out of college. She was rightly worried about what this meant for her future.
Why was this happening?
She had long relied on chiropractors for her medical care. They had saved her from years of debilitating symptoms previously. But when chiropractic care failed to resolve her new symptoms, she knew she needed something else.
If you’ve ever watched your carefully built life get dismantled by symptoms that no one can fully explain, this post is for you.
One of the employees at the chiropractic clinic she went to found a post I had written here on Substack about iron (I have many in the archives).
Kenna flew to see us looking for better answers to her perplexing and alarming symptoms.
Six months later, her symptoms had completely resolved. Kenna now works at our practice. This is her story, releasing tomorrow as a podcast.
What We Found When We Looked Closer
When she came to us, she was struggling with:
Severe fatigue and dizziness, including syncopal episodes. She couldn’t function for more than a few minutes at a time.
Widespread joint pain that was severe enough to interfere with basic daily tasks.
Chronic gut symptoms and stomach pain that had persisted for years.
Chaotic iron labs. Within a single week, results swung from double the upper limit of normal to extremely low.
She knew something was deeply wrong. So did her chiropractor.
What Nobody Had Looked For
When I heard her story, I immediately suspected mold. When we tested her apartment, we found shockingly high levels. She immediately moved out.
But in our experience, it’s never just “one thing.” It’s easy to scapegoat mold. It’s better to take a holistic view of the patient’s history. Kenna had been sick for years prior to this. While chiropractic care had helped, I suspected she had a total toxic burden in her body that went beyond just mold.
This is what we see as a rule in our practice. A patient comes in thinking their problem is mold, Lyme, or a heavy metal. Testing reveals much more than just one cause of their illness.
It wasn’t just “one thing.” She didn’t just need “mold detox.” She needed a comprehensive program of care that addressed all aspects of her diet, lifestyle, and environment.
We look at an illness like Kenna’s as repair deficit. Repair deficit is the slow accumulation of damage over time that exceeds the body’s capacity to repair. It wasn’t just the mold that had wrecked her health. It was a combination of factors both physical and energetic.
We gave Kenna our framework and within six months, her symptoms were gone.
“The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well.”
- Hippocrates
We addressed mineral imbalances, repleting her body with the “spark plugs of life.” We gave her vital nutrients like vitamin C, MSM, and iodine. She started light therapy. She did the work of getting outside, avoiding mold, and taking her supplements as recommended.
Over the following six months, her labs normalized gradually, trending into ideal ranges.
One morning she woke up and the fatigue, pain, and dizziness were gone.
She went back to lifting weights, taking long walks with her husband, and enjoying the married life she had been looking forward to.
Three Things To Explore This Week
Notice whether your symptoms cluster around exposures. Do you feel worse after spending time in certain buildings, after certain foods, or after periods of higher stress? Did symptoms start after a move? These are important signals from your environment.
Ask yourself what you’ve been adding versus removing. Most patients I see have been in “add more” mode for years. More supplements, more protocols, more testing. Sometimes the most important clinical move is removing (in this case, exposure to mold). Consider whether there are exposures in your daily environment, products, materials, buildings, foods, that might be creating a repair deficit.
Consider baseline mineral and iron labs. Hair tissue mineral analysis and a standard iron panel, including transferrin saturation and ferritin, when properly interpreted, offer vital insights to direct treatment. In my experience, patients with high toxic burden and significant fatigue often show mineral dysregulation that does not appear in routine labs. This is why we run hair tissue mineral analyses every quarter in the practice.
Where to Go From Here
Kenna’s case is far from unusual. Countless other young women are struggling as Kenna did. Fortunately, there is hope. Resolution didn’t come from a single diagnosis or a single treatment. It came from treating her as a whole person with a complex history and life story.
When I set out to build a framework, my goal was simple.
To help our patients achieve their health goals as quickly, predictably, and efficiently as possible.
I am so grateful for patients like Kenna who show up, do the work, and show us what is possible. The body’s capacity for healing is incredible. But to unlock it, you have to give the body what it needs.
Kenna is now a member of our team at the practice. You’ll meet her if you sign up for one of our programs or memberships. She’s training to become one of our health coaches. We are so glad to have her on the team.
If you’re interested in working with us to get to the bottom of your health concerns, apply for consultation with our team today.
As always, discuss any changes with your own licensed clinician. Read our full disclaimers, disclosures, and our position on health freedom here.
Until next time, be well,
Dr. Stillman
Educational content only. Not medical advice. See full disclaimers.
Fantastic detective work! I am pleased she came right. It seems another important exposure is whether the patient has had historic "Covid" infection or jab which throws up other problems and solutions. Which was my case.