How does CIRS impact your brain?
CIRS Atrophies Caudate or Putamen
Research by Dr. Shoemaker using NeuroQuant brain imaging documents specific impact to the CIRS brain. In fact, Dr. Shoemaker can tell if your CIRS is caused by mold or Lyme disease just by looking at your brain. CIRS patients that are impacted by mold have atrophy of the caudate while CIRS patients that are impacted by Lyme have atrophy of the putamen. To understand how CIRS impacts to the brain affect you, you need to understand what the caudate and putamen do for you.
Respect Your Caudate
If your CIRS is caused by mold and your caudate is atrophied you may experience symptoms that you did not realize were related to CIRS. The caudate nucleus is used in voluntary movement, learning, memory, sleep and social behavior. Here are some of the things your caudate does:
Respect Your Putamen
The Putamen regulates movements and influences various types of learning such as reinforcement and implicit learning and category learning.
CIRS Causes Oxygen Starvation in Brain
CIRS definitely affects brain function. High C4a levels result in capillary hypoperfusion. This means that you stop growing enough little blood vessels to feed the surrounding cells. This becomes most critical when it happens in the brain. Brain cells suffering from capillary hypoperfusion essentially become "oxygen starved." Capillary hypoprofusion caused by high C4a affects the hippocampus and frontal lobe of your brain. The hippocampus is responsible for the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory. It is also responsible for spatial navigation. The frontal lobe is responsible for attention span, short-term memory tasks, planning, motivation and rewards. Oxygen starvation in these areas of the brain makes them not function well.
You may find that you are searching for a word, can't seem to remember new things and feel disorganized. It is bad enough for an adult to experience these symptoms. For children it is devastating because they are trying to learn so many new things and may not be particularly organized or spatially aware to begin with. If you have a child that is diagnosed with any learning disability be sure to have them checked for CIRS. This symptom is often described as a lack of ability to focus. It is true that it is very hard to focus when your brain is being oxygen starved. Lowering C4a (inflammation) will correct this symptom and may save a kid from a lifetime of distress.
Dr. Shoemaker describes the symptom of brain oxygen starvation this way:
"In a recent paper, ERMI values were correlated with laboratory assays, symptoms, neurotoxicological studies and measurement of brain metabolites, lactate (indicating capillary hypoperfusion) and ratios of glutamate to glutamine (indicating the balance of excitation versus inhibition of neurotransmission.) There was a clear association between an elevated ERMI and elevated levels of lactate measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), in the hippocampus (memory) and frontal lobes (acquisition), together with reduction of normal ratios of glutamate to glutamine. An elevated ERMI was closely linked to brain fog, memory deficits and abnormal executive cognitive function.
Do high levels of mold, therefore, translate in genetically susceptible patients into inflammation that reduces blood flow in particular parts of the brain such that the brain doesn't work? Yes! Even, better, (i) following treatment abnormal brain metabolites are reduced and (ii) the benefit of treatment maintained with re-occupancy of the home provided with post-remediation ERMI is less than 2."
from Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker "Surviving Mold" pg. 721
Treatment for CIRS Reverses Impacts to Brain
The good news is that these brain impacts are reversible with treatment for CIRS.
Updated 3-19-14
Research by Dr. Shoemaker using NeuroQuant brain imaging documents specific impact to the CIRS brain. In fact, Dr. Shoemaker can tell if your CIRS is caused by mold or Lyme disease just by looking at your brain. CIRS patients that are impacted by mold have atrophy of the caudate while CIRS patients that are impacted by Lyme have atrophy of the putamen. To understand how CIRS impacts to the brain affect you, you need to understand what the caudate and putamen do for you.
Respect Your Caudate
If your CIRS is caused by mold and your caudate is atrophied you may experience symptoms that you did not realize were related to CIRS. The caudate nucleus is used in voluntary movement, learning, memory, sleep and social behavior. Here are some of the things your caudate does:
- integrates spatial information with motor behavior formulation
- plays a key role in creating goal-directed actions
- important to working memory
- aids learning by helping classify incoming information
- aids learning by processing feedback to responses
- increases duration of slow-wave sleep (Slow-wave sleep aids transition of information from short-term to long-term memory, thereby aiding learning)
- active in REM sleep so is important in overall quality of sleep
- affects approach and attachment behavior in relationships (if your caudate doesn't work it can result in obsessive -compulsive disorder, loss of drive or hyperactivity)
- responds to visual beauty
- is the center for language control (monitors and controls lexical and language alternatives)
Respect Your Putamen
The Putamen regulates movements and influences various types of learning such as reinforcement and implicit learning and category learning.
CIRS Causes Oxygen Starvation in Brain
CIRS definitely affects brain function. High C4a levels result in capillary hypoperfusion. This means that you stop growing enough little blood vessels to feed the surrounding cells. This becomes most critical when it happens in the brain. Brain cells suffering from capillary hypoperfusion essentially become "oxygen starved." Capillary hypoprofusion caused by high C4a affects the hippocampus and frontal lobe of your brain. The hippocampus is responsible for the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory. It is also responsible for spatial navigation. The frontal lobe is responsible for attention span, short-term memory tasks, planning, motivation and rewards. Oxygen starvation in these areas of the brain makes them not function well.
You may find that you are searching for a word, can't seem to remember new things and feel disorganized. It is bad enough for an adult to experience these symptoms. For children it is devastating because they are trying to learn so many new things and may not be particularly organized or spatially aware to begin with. If you have a child that is diagnosed with any learning disability be sure to have them checked for CIRS. This symptom is often described as a lack of ability to focus. It is true that it is very hard to focus when your brain is being oxygen starved. Lowering C4a (inflammation) will correct this symptom and may save a kid from a lifetime of distress.
Dr. Shoemaker describes the symptom of brain oxygen starvation this way:
"In a recent paper, ERMI values were correlated with laboratory assays, symptoms, neurotoxicological studies and measurement of brain metabolites, lactate (indicating capillary hypoperfusion) and ratios of glutamate to glutamine (indicating the balance of excitation versus inhibition of neurotransmission.) There was a clear association between an elevated ERMI and elevated levels of lactate measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), in the hippocampus (memory) and frontal lobes (acquisition), together with reduction of normal ratios of glutamate to glutamine. An elevated ERMI was closely linked to brain fog, memory deficits and abnormal executive cognitive function.
Do high levels of mold, therefore, translate in genetically susceptible patients into inflammation that reduces blood flow in particular parts of the brain such that the brain doesn't work? Yes! Even, better, (i) following treatment abnormal brain metabolites are reduced and (ii) the benefit of treatment maintained with re-occupancy of the home provided with post-remediation ERMI is less than 2."
from Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker "Surviving Mold" pg. 721
Treatment for CIRS Reverses Impacts to Brain
The good news is that these brain impacts are reversible with treatment for CIRS.
Updated 3-19-14
