Blood Work for Health & Longevity with Emily Morrow

I’m joined on this episode by Emily Morrow, blood work expert, IHP (Integrative Health Practitioner) & FNTP (Functional Nutrition Training Practitioner). Emily has a thriving online practice where she works with clients and trains other practitioners in the expert use of blood work to find the root cause of health conditions. 

Emily has talked at conferences across the country and has built a knowledge base that is helping to change how blood work is used in functional medicine. 

We break down “normal” lab results that don’t match how you feel and show how to read common markers for early signs of insulin resistance, thyroid drag, gut inflammation, mold patterns, and more. Emily Morrow shares a practical sequence for stabilising glucose, supporting digestion, lowering toxic load, and tackling deeper issues with clarity.

• why reference ranges drift and hide early dysfunction
• fasting insulin and TG:HDL ratio as early metabolic flags
• thyroid clues in calcium, AST/ALT, and lipids
• cholesterol’s link to hormone synthesis and fertility
• where to start when symptoms are vague
• metals displacing minerals and blocking metabolism
• Bartonella patterns and supportive botanicals
• mold signals in CO2, urinary pH, ADH, specific gravity
• gut markers: globulin, BUN, and hs‑CRP
• a stepwise plan: stabilize, soothe, drain, bind, then target
• simple ways to reduce daily exposures and track progresslth. 

Listen and find out how you can eliminate blood sugar dysfunction, balance hormones, improve immediate & long-term health and even address autoimmune disorders. 

You can find Emily on Instagram @emilymorrow or on her website: 

 https://www.theemilymorrow.com/

If this hit something real for you, follow @ryanmarkkimball on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram — and stay close to the work that’s changing how we heal and how we live.

Disclaimer:

This podcast is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose, and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, prescription, or recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

Chapters

• 2:13 Emily's Story
• 7:30 Predicting Insulin resistance with blood work
• 14:24 What to ask your Doctor @ fasting insulin
• 16:24 Thyroid and Your Blood
• 16:41 Predicting Thyroid Issues
• 21:57 Cholesterol and Sex Hormones
• 25:35 How to know where to start...
• 30:49 Detecting Mold with common blood work
• 40:03 Gut Health - how stay on top of it
• 45:37 Dealing with toxins
• 56:08 Emily Morrow's Contact Info

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

Hello and welcome to this week's episode. We're covering lamb blood work and finding the root cause for illness and really any non-optimum health situation. So it's a fascinating subject. I have a very special guest, extremely knowledgeable, and a longtime practitioner who's gotten hundreds, if not thousands, of results on people and helping them improve their health and life. As a blood work and lamp expert, she's gonna explain how to use your blood work that you can get from your doctor each year to get to the root cause of illness, and really, as they said, any body dysfunction. And even beyond that, how to optimize your health from this information and get the most out of your life. Her name is Emily Marl, and today we're covering specifically how to balance blood sugar, thyroid optimization, hormonal health, lime, mold detox, herbicide, heavy metal, and a bunch more, actually. And we're also gonna cover why your lamps may look good, or you may be told that everything is in the healthy range, um, yet you don't feel healthy, or something is going on that isn't resolving in your health. And um, you know, why that is and how to navigate that type of communication and actually get fully optimized in your health and fitness level. Okay, without further ado, here is Emily Morrow. All right. So, Emily, thank you so much for being here today with us.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50

Yeah, absolutely. Um, your expertise with blood work and all the work you do with clients and what I've seen and heard from you at uh the seminar I went to with um Cellcore was pretty amazing. So, can you give us a little bit of background, a little bit about your journey, your story, and how you came to be what you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

For sure. So I feel like if you talk to anybody in the health space practitioners, they're there because it was part of their own history, part of their own story. And so my health story could have a bunch of little details in the midst from being really sick as a kid, having my tonsils removed, breaking numerous bones, concussions, ear infections, tons of things as a kid, but really my health collapsed after college. I felt like I was kind of running on stress hormones in college. I played collegiate soccer at the University of Tennessee. And so I was surviving. I was surviving by taking four to six Tylenol or Advil a day. And yeah, my gut disaster. And they put me on birth control. Little did I know the side effects my freshman year because I lost my menstrual cycle. And so they were like solution, birth control. So birth control paired with the stress of keeping a scholarship and maintaining good grades and being 14 hours away from home and going through just a lot of life stress. We lost my stepsister when I was in college to suicide. So mental health is something that's really important to me, and just a lot of things that were thrown my direction in a very short span of time. And so, with all that to say, I graduated and my health just absolutely collapsed. And I was diagnosed after seeing numerous specialists with Hashimoto's, which most people are familiar with, the autoimmune thyroid disorder of hypothyroid. And then I was also diagnosed with, it doesn't have like an official autoimmune name, they just call it autoimmune liver. It wasn't lupus, but autoimmune liver disease. I had astronomically high liver enzymes. My body put on about 40 to 50 pounds in a year. My eyes, my palms, my hands. I've told this story a few times. I was like in the beautiful mountains of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on this horse, should be enjoying every moment. And I got off and I just broke. I was in devastating tears because there was anxiety, there was panic, there was depression, my palms were yellow, my eyes were yellow. I felt like I wasn't me. And so that really just jump started my desire to get into this space because so many doctors said there was nothing you could do. I think we've all heard that at one point or another. Um, so you know, you go, you seek out a bunch of people, you learn a little bit, you move on, and I came across this doctor who was probably like the 20th doctor in the line of people I've tried to get information from who sat me down and went line by line with me with blood work. And so that really was the pinnacle of opening my eyes of a doctors are not reading these panels properly. They don't know what they mean. They can give you so much insight and information about the human body and clues into what's going on from a deeper root cause perspective, and then guidance that was beyond just here's a band-aid. Because I think even in the holistic world, we've seen where instead of a medication, here is a nutraceutical supplement that's still a band-aid. You know, you can take turmeric for pain, but we want to start asking the question, why is there pain? Why do we have these underlying root issues? And so I just started talking and sharing about my own story and journey on social platforms and in my local community, doing talks at local businesses and started getting clients. And, you know, same story as me. A lot of them came to me with the same story, and I started running labs. And so the talk that you heard at Eco was a sweet, sweet, sweet human being that came to me that was struggling with a lot of the same things I was, a lot of skin stuff with her too, trauma, overwhelm in medical school. And, you know, we look at our labs, and there's clues for mold, there's clues for Lyme, there's clues for Babesia, there's clues for heavy metals, there's clues for parasites, and lo and behold, you start supporting their body from a foundational perspective, chipping away at some of these root causes, their numbers start to balance, the skin starts to clear up, their anxiety starts to diminish, they start digesting their food and sleeping and all the things we're looking for when it comes to health and vitality. So that's probably the most condensed, shortened version of how we've gotten to this point today.

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

Gotcha. Wow, sounds pretty intense, actually.

SPEAKER_00: 6:38

Yeah, it was for a little while.

SPEAKER_01: 6:42

Well, great that you've accomplished what you've accomplished and established so much knowledge in the area to help yourself, help others. It's awesome. So that's really great. So yeah, I definitely would like to take advantage of some of your knowledge regarding blood work and how it can be used in a practical sense in a person's life, you know, to the degree that they obviously maybe the common person who isn't doing this as a profession doesn't want to be expert or need to be. But what are some things they can be aware of? And let's just start with something that's very common to people: insulin resistance, um, the the overweight amount of people overweight in the society, how it influences our health. What can you tell us about that for a starter?

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

That's very important because glucose regulation and insulin resistance is one of the number one predictors for like 10 of the most complex diseases, cardiovascular disease being one of them, and then that can kind of funnel down into metabolic dysfunction. And there is a lot of people walking around with insulin resistance and pre-diabetes, and they have no idea. They have absolutely no idea. They may not manifest with symptoms for a very long time. And most doctors don't run the marker fasting insulin. And they're looking at two markers predominantly for insulin resistance or diabetes if they even know what insulin resistance is, and it's glucose and hemoglobin A1C. But there's a lot of other markers on a blood panel that can indicate if we're not managing glucose well. One of those is fasting insulin. Ideally, we want it around that two to five range. Most people will say you want it at least under eight, but there's people with fasting insulins in the 12s, 13s, 14s, 15s. And it's one of the most aging things in the body, insulin is. And it forces the body to work in overtime to a point where eventually that signaling system and communication just comes to a halt. And then the insulin can't get into the cells and attach to those receptors. It's like a key in a hole. And so it's just floating in the bloodstream. And then we have symptoms of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, high blood sugar, low blood sugar, where we eat a meal, it should spike our glucose. Insulin is secreted from the pancreas and it brings it back down, and that's not happening. And that is the case for a lot of people, even if they're ripped to shreds. I used to work with CrossFit athletes and some NHL players, and they look super healthy, but they were in the prediabetes ranges. And so fasting insulin is a really important marker. And then the other two markers that can really give you a lot of information that's on pretty much anybody's blood work, is the ratio between triglycerides, which is in the cholesterol lipid panel, and HDL. And so when you have a ratio that is above 2.5, let's say their triglycerides are super high because they're not digesting their fat well or there is prediabetes going on, your HDL, which is your good cholesterol, is way too low, you have a large gap, a large ratio. You ideally want that as close to like a 1.5 ratio as you can. So for example, if HDL was 40, you would not really want your triglycerides greater than 100. If they are triglycerides above 100 or that ratio gap too large, very good indicator of insulin resistance. And pretty much anybody can look at their labs and do that quick math.

unknown: 10:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

And so somebody shouldn't feel backed off about looking at that and you know, making a comment on it or saying, hey, I want to address this to their professional they're working with, right? Okay, great. And then the first one you mentioned, the fasting insulin, is that common to most blood work? Is that something you have to specially request?

SPEAKER_00: 10:36

You have to specially request it. It's really sad. It's kind of one of those cases where when you go in and you're like, I want to see how I'm doing from an insulin and glucose perspective, they're probably gonna run glucose, fast and glucose, and a hemoglobin A1C, which is around your two to three month average of your glucose markers. Now, why that's an issue is if someone's on a roller coaster and they have highs, highs, and lows, lows, that average is gonna look pretty spot on. And so fasting, a lot of people may have a solid fasting glucose, which is below 86. We really want a fasting glucose below 86. So they go into their doctor and they're like, I'm golden. I've got an 87. Check. Hemoglobin A1C, they're running in the 200s and then hypoglycemia 50s from lack of balanced meals or eating too much or not eating enough. And then you take that 150 and a hypoglycemia range of 60, average it out, their hemoglobin A1C looks okay. So we get into issues here where people are not able to tell or see that they have a potential insulin resistance situation going on.

SPEAKER_01: 11:45

Makes sense. Yeah. And I've heard that insulin resistance shows up in the body before the high glucose. Is that correct? So you could find it first?

SPEAKER_00: 11:58

Correct. And this is kind of out there with how long it takes, different perspectives, say different amounts of time, but there's been a few situations where it can be like anywhere from five to seven to ten to thirteen years before the glucose and hemoglobin A1C fully catches up. Whereas fasting insulin, you're gonna get a definitive answer right there. And so we really want it that two to five. Now, type one diabetes, because they're not making insulin, that's where there's that two in play. They may be like zero or one or 0.5, right? They may still produce a little bit, but also people that have like in your community, there may be a few in the 1.5 range because they're not eating a lot of carbs. So we're not seeing a change in insulin. And you're very familiar with this. Certain protein is very insulin driving. And people have been shocked when they eat a whey protein shake. It has zero grams of carbs and zero grams of sugar, but their glucose shoots up to 160.

SPEAKER_01: 13:04

Yes, I've seen that many times actually.

SPEAKER_00: 13:07

Yeah. So, you know, it depends on what someone's diet is. Keto can play a role in that, but we really want to shoot for two to five on that fasting insulin.

SPEAKER_01: 13:20

Okay, interesting. Okay, and then when a person is, I thought you were gonna say like two to seven months, and then you said like seven to ten years or whatever the number was there. So at that time, those many years before when you have this insulin, high insulin, insulin resistance starting to be created, that's the time to catch it way before it gets to the point where it's affecting your glucose chronically. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 13:50

Absolutely. You want to catch it early. That's why we're in this space of preventative medicine. We're choosing to make diet, lifestyle, exercise changes before it becomes disease. So, yeah, I mean, catching it early is huge.

SPEAKER_01: 14:11

Good. And then um, and a person, just to make it crystal clear for anybody listening who wants to take advantage of this, you'd simply ask your doctor or nurse practitioner or whoever's running your labs to run fasting insulin as part of the blood work?

SPEAKER_00: 14:28

Yes, with the notion that they may bill you because our insurance system is just a little bit broken and they don't like to cover a lot of markers. You know, you ask them to run a thyroid panel and you get TSH back. I want a full thyroid panel, please run it, and they only run TSH. Or if they do run the other markers, then you have a bill in the mail. This happened to me a few times. It made me so irritated for$500 for Ferritin, B12, and Fulate. And you're like, really? So I also was like, there has to be another way. And so I partnered with a lab called Avexia Diagnostics and were able to run labs at a very cheap cost. So, like a CBC and CMP, basic labs,$15. Add fasting insulin for$10,$25. Right. Yeah. It's really not that expensive. It's just that uh-huh, insurance and the medical system, they drive those prices up astronomically.

SPEAKER_01: 15:35

Yeah, no, understood. That's amazing. And we'll have that information in the notes and everything so people can take advantage of that. Because I've actually never heard of being able to run those at that cost, at that low of a cost. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, this makes a lot of sense. And then um, so let's say a person is you know moving on to a different area with lab work and whatnot. Let's say a person is looking to try to balance. We have a lot of people come in with thyroid issues. They've been told they're gonna need to be on medication or get surgery, or their biopsy said XYZ. Do you have some things to maybe help a person know like you can with the insulin way beforehand that something's going on with their thyroid?

SPEAKER_00: 16:24

You can. And I'm glad you said beforehand because it takes, and most people don't aren't aware of this and don't know this, but it takes a 25% reduction in the thyroid before it starts to manifest in blood work.

SPEAKER_01: 16:40

Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

So now people are walking around, their labs look okay, quote, okay, their thyroid labs look okay, but it may be functioning at 77%.

SPEAKER_01: 16:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 16:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:57

So 77% below what it should be to be healthy.

SPEAKER_00: 17:01

Correct. So, like if your thyroid is awesome, it's working great, it's functioning at 100%. Imagine if it took a hit radiation, heavy metals, other contributors, and so that hundred has now decreased to functioning at 77%. So you've lost a lot of function. And that's not great because it's not showing up on labs yet. So you don't know why you don't feel good. And your thyroid's responsible for activating mitochondria in every other organ. So not only is your thyroid not working well, your heart's not working well, your liver's not working well, your kidneys are not working well, your brain's not working well, your spleen's not working well, your reproductive system's not working well, it's all connected. So it's it's vitally important to have clues early on. And there's a few of them. Granted, it's kind of like a process of elimination approach when it comes to the thyroid, but when you're looking at a panel as a whole with like markers that people typically might run, if you see elevated liver enzymes, that's gonna be your AST and ALT, that is responsible for converting your inactive thyroid to active thyroid hormon, your T4 into your T3. So if your liver is struggling, it's also gonna impact the thyroid. So that's one. But one of my favorite markers that you tend to see very early on is calcium. And calcium is run on almost everybody's blood work panel. And part of the reason why is because the parathyroid, which sits, their glands that sit right on the thyroid, they are responsible for balancing calcium and phosphorus. And so if that's not happening, then we have an imbalance in calcium and phosphorus. And the range for calcium is 9.2 to 9.8. And so if it's outside of that range, it can be a thyroid issue.

SPEAKER_01: 19:02

Wow, that's a pretty narrow range.

SPEAKER_00: 19:04

Yes, it is. And we see a lot of people with 10.0 calcium or 11.0, and then there's some sort of signaling system or problem that's been disrupted with the thyroid. And that's a very good marker to look at. Another set of markers going back to the lipid panel is your cholesterol and LDL. And there's a lot of misinformation about cholesterol and LDL. We need it. We don't want to have a panel where we don't have any because it's responsible for the synthesis of our steroid hormones. But elevated levels can also be hypothyroid.

SPEAKER_01: 19:49

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:51

So if you see total cholesterol, oh yeah, so it's not even something necessarily related to a person eating too much of something that's gonna change it. It could just be the thyroids not doing what it should be.

SPEAKER_00: 20:11

Exactly. Yeah. And there's a lot of little mechanisms that get into the real science side of things of why, but with those markers specifically, it may have nothing to do with like plaque on the arteries and everything to do with an underfunctioning thyroid that's driving those markers up. Yet they go in and what are they given? A statin or baby aspirin or something like that.

SPEAKER_01: 20:32

Yeah, it just compounds the situation, really.

SPEAKER_00: 20:35

Exactly. Yeah. So those are kind of early detective markers, but most of the time, if people are looking to make lifestyle changes, they already don't feel great. That's what got them into this space to begin with. So typically, because I run labs on every single person I see and that enters into our practice. And so it's not uncommon for me to see a thyroid panel that is all over the place. It's very rare to see a normal thyroid panel.

SPEAKER_01: 21:06

Wow. How interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's very common. We have people come in with fatigue or something going on with their uh emotional health, and they've seen somebody, and thyroid has come up. So that's why I wanted to ask you about it with a blood work. Those markers make a lot of sense. Yeah. And then something you mentioned about it throwing off cholesterol, and the cholesterol helps with our certain hormones. Um, which hormones were we referring to? I think you said the steroid hormones.

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

Correct. The steroid hormones, yeah. So there's a lot of women where their total cholesterol is maybe 130. It's really, really low. And it's usually the people who come from a background of trauma, stress, long-time chronic infections, long-time old toxicity, more so just nutrient depletion. Their body has been either in a starvation season, an over-exercising season. And so when you're being chased by a bear or there's high cortisol, what's the first thing to be shut down? Your reproductive system. It's very hard to get pregnant in that way. And so that's why we need enough. We need enough cholesterol to synthesize those really important steroid hormones. And so with those women, we always have being men too, that conversation of how much are we eating? What does our stress levels look like? What does our exercise look like? How much are we sleeping? Those factors in the big bigger picture are important.

SPEAKER_01: 22:40

Yeah, absolutely. So the uh use of blood work with helping a person have a child create fertility. This would start with looking at things like where is your what's your thyroid doing? How's your liver working? Things like that.

SPEAKER_00: 22:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:57

Just because the other markers, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:00

Those are needed when you mention fertility. We need progesterone to get pregnant and to stay pregnant. It was once called like progestation. And progesterone and the thyroid are best friends. I kind of educate in that way where things are either enemies or they're best friends. And the progesterone and thyroid are best friends. And so if the thyroid goes into that hyporange, it's gonna pull progesterone down with it. And vice versa. If the progesterone gets pulled down due to cortisol or excess adrenal stress, that typical process of making progesterone is gonna shift and it's gonna be used for the cortisol pathway. Well, progesterone goes down, pulls the thyroid down with it. So oftentimes with these infertility situations, there's a lot of things can that can lead to infertility, but so much of it does come back to progesterone, the thyroid and the nutrients that are needed for optimal functioning of both.

SPEAKER_01: 24:03

Wow, amazing. It's this harmonious balance that has to happen. And uh, you know, it sounds complicated, but it seems like there are also some very key things you can just kind of zero in on to balance a lot of different factors in the body. Would that be correct?

SPEAKER_00: 24:20

Absolutely, yep.

SPEAKER_01: 24:22

Right. Um, you know, we covered a couple topics here. A lot of clients that we have come in to see us don't necessarily know exactly why they're feeling non-optimum or their energy is low or they keep putting on weight or whatever. What would you say to someone who can't come to you and say, oh, I know I'm having thyroid trouble, or I know I have trouble with sugar and insulin? What type of place would a person like that start?

SPEAKER_00: 24:51

Million dollar question, right? Um so there's a few different places to start. Number one, I love the symptoms that the body gives us. They're alarm systems, they're clues. So let's just put weight loss resistance on the table. We start to break that down of what can cause that. Metabolic dysfunction is one of the big reasons because it's what leads to obesity. And if your glucose is high, your cortisol is high. Those are also best friends, your stress and your glucose. And the body cannot burn fat in a high sugar, high cortisol state. It just can't. It can't tap into those fat reserves. So that's number one is looking at those markers we just discussed with metabolic dysfunction. Then when you kind of dig deeper and you get into these root causes that can lead to weight loss resistance, it could be any of them, but there's a few that are very key. One is gonna be heavy metals. And the reason why is because it causes the receptors to be filled with the metals versus really important minerals that are needed for blood sugar balance. So think of things like chromium that's needed for proper blood sugar and magnesium for the nervous system, and selenium, which is needed for the thyroid. These metals come in and they displace those really essential minerals, and then we suffer from, again, hormone issues or thyroid problems as a result. So that would be the second thing that I would maybe look at. And there's a few different ways to test for metals. One is through a hair tissue mineral analysis test. A lot of metals will come out through the hair. Another way would be a urinary test. Some metals come out through the urine. And then there's also some metals that can show up in the blood. So if someone wants to know, are metals playing a role in weight loss resistance or blood sugar imbalance, they could look into those tests. Another really key one is Bartonella. Are you familiar with Bartonella?

SPEAKER_01: 27:01

Not it, not very much. Give me some more information. How does that work? I guess.

SPEAKER_00: 27:05

So Bartonella is a bacteria. It's a gram-negative bacteria, and it's considered a Lyme coinfection. So it's within the coinfection family of Lyme disease. It's termed the cat scratch disease because a lot of animals and cats carry it, but it can also be spread through fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, all of these other ways. Bartonella goes in and infects the red blood cells. It also will go and accumulate in the liver and spleen and decrease their function. Liver's needed for glucose balance, liver's needed for hormone balance, the spleen's needed for immune balance. And if those really important organs are being overwhelmed from this bacteria, their function goes down and we start gaining weight. We start packing on the pounds. And that's very common. That's one of the most common things we see that leads to weight loss resistance is Bartonella bacteria. The only downside to that is it's very hard to test for.

SPEAKER_01: 28:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

Very difficult to test for. But there are a few clues. If someone sees anemia on their labs, like iron anemia, we see how common that is, right?

unknown: 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:19

Or if we see elevated liver enzymes, AST, ALT, that bacteria can cause those issues. So there's clues within these labs of blood work that can point to it. Um and really, regardless if you can get a positive test, there's herbs that people can add in to help. And really the top two that we really are cordyceps mushroom. Really great for Bartonella. Um, another one is Japanese knotweed.

SPEAKER_01: 28:50

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 28:51

So those two are really great to just kind of help decrease that bacterial load, which will just get the body back into balance. Another thing people can look at is mold. I don't know how familiar your audience is with mold, but if people move into a molded home, okay, okay. If people move into a moldy home, and all of a sudden they're like, what is going on? I don't feel like myself, my weight's through the roof, I'm got vertigo and dizziness and these static electrical shocks and tremors, and they just don't feel like themselves. And that can also throw off blood sugar. The body can go into a state of overactive nervous system function. And so, as a protective mechanism, the pounds just start hacking on. So these are just all things to start thinking about and exploring that I feel like was such an aha moment for even me of like, I'm eating well, I'm exercising well, I'm sleeping well, I feel like I'm doing all these right things, and the needle's not moving.

SPEAKER_01: 29:56

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And as far As the mold goes, I've heard that can hide inside of things in the body like Lyme or parasites or whatever. Is there some blood work that can be used to help be an early detection system for mold as well?

SPEAKER_00: 30:14

Yes, there is. So if we go back to parasites, like you mentioned, because they can hold their weight in basically everything we've talked about thus far. They can hold their weight in metals, they can hold their weight in mycotoxins, they can hold their weight in Lyme bacteria. And the two markers that are your parasite markers are your eosinophils, short EOS, and your basophils, short B-A-S-O-S. If they had a name tag, because those are part of your soldiers, your white blood cells, it would be like parasite fighters. The only other thing they really do is like allergies and asthma. But um, if those are elevated, like basophils, if it's one or above, eosinophils above three, parasites are present. So then that's a whole other thing you got to add into the bigger picture. But from there, mold does have very specific things that impacts on a blood work panel. And two of the ones that are very definitive for us that we look at are carbon dioxide, and I'll touch on why in a second, and the urinary pH. So in a urinalysis, you know how they spit out that pH?

SPEAKER_01: 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:22

Okay. So if we look at CO2, carbon dioxide, um, my sports background, that's why I like to have analogies with sports, but a sprinter is sprinting down a track and they can only go so long until lactic acid builds up in those muscles and they are deprived of oxygen. They eventually have to stop. And so when there is mold, it creates an acidic environment in the body. So in that acidic environment, we see a lower carbon dioxide, a low CO2, below 25, and we see a low urinary pH. So that urinary pH, ideally, we want it as close to seven as possible. And a lot of mold people will see it 5.0, 6.0. Those lower markers because of the acidity that the mold is creating. That's why there's brain fog with mold. A lot of the mold symptoms, if you really break down why they're all there, it's lack of oxygen. Think of dizziness, think of vertigo, think of joint pain. All of those are a lack of oxygen. So those are two of the most definitive ones we look at. Granted, we can't say you have mold because both of those are out of range, but it should get people thinking in a new way. Um, another one, because of the way mold affects your anti-diuretic hormone, you may see variations in the ADH hormone. So mold will impact that. It's why kids wet the bed when they're in a moldy situation, because of the way mold influences ADH. So you may see an ADH out of balance on labs, and you may see a specific gravity. I don't know if you're familiar with that marker, but that marker is basically also a part of the urinalysis. And we tend to see it like 1.005, 1.006, very, very low, low end with mold because of the way it influences ADH and the body's ability to actually absorb the water from a cellular standpoint. Um, and that's also why when you're talking about what can people do with these situations, why saline IVs or mineral IVs or choline IVs, all these things that get minerals into the cells helps people so much when they're dealing with mold. So it's hydrating them.

SPEAKER_01: 33:42

Right. It displaces the mold and the cell. Is that part of the choline?

SPEAKER_00: 33:47

Yep. Choline, like if you flood the body with like choline from phosphatidylcholine or IV phosphatidylcholine, it goes in there, the choline comes into the cell and it says, hey, mold metals, mycotoxins, get out. Get out. Um, which is great. We want to bind it, be on binders and things like that, so it's not free-floating. Um, same thing with minerals. Those minerals go in and they displace the mold, they displace the mycotoxins. Selenium's great for you know, displacing mercury and they're forced to be peed out. Um, that's why they'll often do provoking testing with mycotoxin panels, lime panels, metal panels, because it likes to, like you said, go hide itself in organs and tissues in the lymphatic system. So lymphatic massages and saw infrared saunas and all these things that can get it out of tissues to be able to sweat it out or pee it out can help when they're trying to get testing done to see what's going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 34:44

Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. I've heard so many people who we find mold with or it comes up saying that they wish they'd found it many years ago because they feel so different now that they're addressing it or broke through a plateau that you know they've been struggling with or didn't even know they have. So I think that's a really important piece for a lot of people. Now, these markers you mentioned that, you know, to check for and whatnot, are these things the person would also have to ask for specifically, or are these pretty common?

SPEAKER_00: 35:16

They're very common. Those are a part of just the basic lab panels. And that's what I love about this is most people, maybe not everyone, a lot of people in the wellness world have like just said, I'm not gonna have a doctor. I'm never gonna go see a PCP. But for the most part, on a yearly basis, you have a physical and they will run basic labs. Where people have been misled is they run those labs and the doctor gives them a phone call or flags it and says, Oh, everything looks normal, everything looks good, you have nothing to worry about. But the ranges that they're going off of are so skewed. They're based upon the sickest of the sick population because they take an average. And right now, one in three have disease. So it's like, what are you being compared to? Someone in a hospital bed or someone with vitality and like wanting to thrive. And so that's a big issue. But that's why podcasts like this and resources that are like, no, no, no, no, no. Look at your labs, take responsibility of those markers, start marking them up and figuring out what it's pointing to. But I like it because it's accessible. Almost anyone can get their PCP to run just, you know, a basic CBC, CMP, and lipid cholesterol panel. That is covered by insurance. So um, yeah, all those markers you just mentioned are covered.

SPEAKER_01: 36:34

Okay, great, great. Um, and just to speak to something you just mentioned, because I actually just heard this a couple weeks ago. It shocked me. So uh and clarify this if it's incorrect, but I've heard that the blood panels used or the ranges for blood panels to show normal or healthy ranges have changed over the years because the population has gotten sicker, basically. There's more chronic and inflammatory diseases, so the blood work is different, but instead of keeping it at the range that is truly healthy, it's been re-averaged out over the years. Is that correct? Or I know it's not correct, but is that what is happening to your knowledge?

SPEAKER_00: 37:17

That's what's happening. And I did a post on this recently on my Instagram because I get that question all the time like, hey, my labs look good. And I went and did this whole thing about an article because it's all over where you can go back and look at PubMed studies from years and years and years ago, and they'll say the optimal range for white blood cells is five to eight. Like years and years and years and years and years ago. Well, do you know what they are now? Three to eleven.

unknown: 37:45

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 37:46

It's even broader. So if someone has chronic illness with a white blood cell four, and their doctor's like, it looks awesome. Our range is three to eleven, and you're in range.

SPEAKER_01: 37:56

Wow. Oh my god, I don't even know what to say to that.

SPEAKER_00: 38:00

I know to meds.

SPEAKER_01: 38:02

That's rough. Well, that's why, like you said, the education piece, being empowered with knowledge for your own and for the health of those that you you care about or know, or whatever. So um, okay, great. Well, a little tangent there, but I think it's worth people understanding that you kind of have to pay attention in order to know that you're getting what is correct, what is healthy for you and for your children, your family, etc., right?

SPEAKER_00: 38:28

Yep, you do. Yeah, taking responsibility for it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:32

Yeah, thanks. Okay, great. So we we covered a lot of ground there. I did have just a couple other things that I wanted to bring up regarding blood work and how uh how it can be used in different ways. So, for example, one of the things that we work with people a lot on is digestive issues. You know, uh almost everyone who who comes in, whether they're working on weight loss or an autoimmune situation or some other non-optimum health situation, has an aspect of a dysfunctional gut, whether they've been diagnosed with IBS or Crohn's or not, something's going on. How does blood work again for you know, telling what's going on, but also what are the precursors somebody can pay attention to in that yearly checkup to make sure they're staying on top of things?

SPEAKER_00: 39:22

Good question. These markers are probably the ones we use most often. It's not to say that there aren't other ones, but the combination of these typically can give us a lot of information. So the first one I always think of when it comes to digestion is a marker called globulin. You know, a lot of us have heard of like immunoglobulins. Yeah. And we want it at least 2.4. Most people are not at least 2.4. They're either 2.1 or less, typically. And that is a big red flag for us of either they have low hydrochloric acid production, they're not producing stomach acid, there's a lot of digestive distress, or there's leaky gut, intestinal permeability, where their gut is damaged or inflamed and they're not absorbing their nutrients. So then from there, when we see that, we look at a few other markers. The next one is called B U N. So it's urea nitrogen breakdown. And we want that one 12 to 18. And so if someone is below 12, they may not be making enzymes, amylase, lipase, protease. So they're not breaking down their food. They're not digesting it. And then on the same token, if they're really high, that's not great either. That can also be low stomach acid or inflammation of the GI tract. With Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, IBS, which is basically just we don't know what's wrong with your gut. So we're gonna throw a blanket diagnosis at you. Typically, with those people, you'll see inflammatory markers that will elevate. And one of those inflammatory markers is C reactive protein, the highly sensitive one, CRP. And you really want that marker less than one. And so with a lot of inflammation in the body, the gut as well, that can drive that marker up. Now, what's been really interesting as I, you know, I'm I'm studying new like PubMed studies that come out all the time with this situation that's going on in our world right now, with you know exactly what I'm talking about. I am always like, how is this gonna impact the blood work? Because how can we detect things early on? And then can our blood reflect progress once we bring in nutrients or support from whatever that infection caused? And one of the things that it's creating is very high CRP values because of the way it's damaging the lung tissue.

SPEAKER_01: 41:57

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00: 41:58

So I've had people where they got blood work done, they started having symptoms about five days later, then they got sick. Well, their blood work was done five days before, and I look at it and their CRP is 20.

SPEAKER_01: 42:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 42:15

Wow, yeah. And then I was like, okay, let me go look in PubMed. And there's numerous studies that have come out in the past few months. We're recording this July 2022, but like March, April, May, June, studies that have come out and shown that the elevation of CRP can help reflect the severity of the infection. And, you know, this smaller elevation of zero to 10, minor infection. Your symptoms aren't going to be as severe. 10 to 20, you're not going to feel great, but you're probably going to be able to handle it. 20 to 40, probably going to need some third-party help. And then they were saying that people in the 50s to 100, those are the ones they're seeing in hospital settings with severe loads and needing machines.

SPEAKER_01: 43:02

Wow.

unknown: 43:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 43:03

Yeah. So, you know, again, the blood is giving us information that there's inflammation going on. And then you can track that over time of, okay, let me support my body, let me take anti-inflammatories and things that support mucus reducing. Vitamin A is great for that. And B propylis and vitamin C. Get labs done again four weeks later and see the progress in the CRP. What is that inflammation doing? It's a CRP is also a great marker with anyone that I work with Crohn's or colitis of how they're doing.

SPEAKER_01: 43:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 43:38

So those are probably the top three most definitive ones. There's other clues that you can kind of look at throughout. For example, if they show a lot of anemia markers, low red blood cells, low ferritin, low hemoglobin, low hematocrit, why are they not absorbing those nutrients? Is it because their gut is impaired? Is it because their gut is inflamed? So with those situations of just inflammation in the body, hemoglobin and hematocrit are naturally lower because we need a healthy gut and a non-inflamed gut to absorb our nutrients.

SPEAKER_01: 44:14

Makes sense. Yeah. Wow. That's you know, it's interesting. There's so much information that you're giving about what to look for and how to address these different things. It can seem quite overwhelming. But would I be correct in saying that if you hone in on and focus on one thing at a time and just improve that, then over time, eventually, you know, in most cases, things will even out and you'll get to the level of health you want unless there's something severely off.

SPEAKER_00: 44:51

Yes, I would agree with you. The only thing where I'm like, I hope more education becomes available is right now the external just assaults that people have to deal with on a daily basis are making it to where these minor changes, they're treading water constantly.

SPEAKER_01: 45:10

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00: 45:11

The herbicides, the pesticides, the air pollution, the chemicals, the metals and products, the fact that there is supplements and foods that aren't tested after manufacturing. And so they're ingesting those, and then that's causing issues. The water, so I mean, all these things where mentally take it slow. But I think that the more you can just know your numbers and know what it's pointing to and kind of fine-tune that based upon your own needs, you really start to see changes over time. But you're absolutely right. You know, if someone is coming to you and they're highly inflamed and their blood sugar is off, start tracking your blood sugar, seeing what foods, meals, exercises, sleep does to it. Get your blood sugar in balance. That's something that can be so, so beneficial for you. Then start looking at gut markers. How can we optimize digestion? Maybe it's a little bit of aloe juice or aloe in a smoothie and some tea and reducing inflammatory foods and gluten and other things that can cause GEI distress and you know, taking longer between meals, adding in periodic. I'm not a big fan of fasting every day for premenstrual, premenopausal women just because it can throw off hormones. But I think like a 24-hour fast once a while in the first half of a female cycle can give that gut a great break or do liquid liquid for a few days just to relieve things. And then once you've got that covered, then move on to the next step. Maybe, you know, you do some drainage and some binding, binding, you know, metals and mycotoxins. And then you take a step further and you do a parasite cleanse. And so, you know, it is a progressive thing. You don't have to do everything at once, but I think it does start with knowing what your markers are telling you.

SPEAKER_01: 46:58

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I would agree completely. I like the fact that you brought up that we do have to concentrate on eliminating the things that might be prolonging or exacerbating, you know, the underlying whether we've pinpointed the root cause is a heavy metal exposure or glyphosate from the field down the road or whatever, we can still be cleaner. And by cleaner, I mean eating cleaner foods or you know, having purified or distilled water, whatever you can start taking on to clean up your environment, then all these things that you're you're mentioning to look at will be much more effective in long term. Would that be accurate?

SPEAKER_00: 47:42

Yeah. I mean, I was shocked that I shared yesterday that I thought this was just a well-known thing that you can avoid TSA scanners to help reduce, you know, the radiation and things. And so many people were like, I didn't know I could avoid the TSA scanner. And I'm like, yeah, you can you can sign up for pre-check, pay$100 a year, and you don't have to avoid even being patted down. But even if you don't have that, you can say, I respectfully want to decline this. Either I have a thyroid situation or my for my health, I I want to decline it and do the pat down, and you can avoid that radiation from the scanner. That's a reduced exposure. So there's little things you can do over the course, like clean water and you know, trying to shop local with farmers and using essential oils to clean your produce and being mindful of the things you're putting on your body from a skincare and a shampoo, a conditioner, and soap perspective, because metals, for example, it's accumulation over time. So step one, decrease accumulation, just like you said. And I have felt even lately, you know, it is so easy to get overwhelmed when you don't feel good and when you're just like, I just want to know the thing. I just want to know what it is. But I've been in this for enough years to recognize that even when you know what it is, it doesn't bring you the relief you're looking for. Because at the end of the day, we live in a world that is filled with toxins and chemicals, and we can do the best we can with what we have, do our best to live in a way that is consistent over time and just chip away at things in a way that feels to you. And you know, bring the basics in and community and laughter and joy and being mindful of social media, and those things do make a really massive difference. They really do.

SPEAKER_01: 49:38

Awesome. Yeah, great. I love it. Makes so much sense and definitely have seen amazing results by applying what you're talking about. So awesome. Thank you. Um, so I'd love to hear a little bit about what how someone engages with you. Uh, I've seen your amazing posts on social media, I've heard you talk, I know you have created miracles with your work, but if someone wanted to reach out to you and take advantage of the products that you've created and the tools that you provide, how does someone do that?

SPEAKER_00: 50:11

I try to do my best of having everything organized on my Instagram account. It's how I launched my practice and it's just kind of what I've stuck to, didn't ever dabble in the other modalities just because I was like, let me focus on one. And so I have recently started creating guides on Instagram, and there's a health toolbox guide, there's a root cause guide with like signs and symptoms and supports and testing. There is just a health guide. And so I'm really doing my best to just put as much free educational info out there right on my Instagram account. There's tons of information and highlights. There is links to blog posts where I've talked on important organs and how to figure out if your organs are struggling and how to support them. I've done a lot in our group page, which is Root Cause Formula, where people can go and read through highlights and get information about just what does it look like to work through root causes? Um, so those are probably the best ways to just learn and be educated. And then if somebody is like, yeah, I really want to take this the next step. I offer two Blood Kim courses where I'm teaching the information similar to what we went over today. One is just a basic course that's basically top one to three reasons, a marker on your labs is high or low. And then I have a full course where it's like very in-depth. Those are for like the people that are like, I want to be a practitioner or I'm a practitioner and want to know more, or I really want to heal my child of autism. It's across the board who enters that. So there's that information. And then I recently brought on three practitioners to help guide people in their health just because I was at capacity. I shut off new clients three years ago because I was maxed out and couldn't accept anyone new. And they're awesome. So they're great. They are accepting clients. So if somebody wants to reach out and just wants to set up a time with them to just maybe go over some of these things with them, that is an option.

SPEAKER_01: 52:23

Great. And uh your handle uh on Instagram, it's what is it again?

SPEAKER_00: 52:28

It's just my name, Emily Morrow. Nothing uh extra special.

SPEAKER_01: 52:33

Okay, well, I thought it was, but I just freaking I'd asked. Okay, great. So, and then I know um if you click on the link in your bio there, there's a whole list of things that you just mentioned. That's how a person can find all this, a lot of this amazing information. And I can attest is very educational. I was looking through it and learning things the other day in preparation for talking with you. So amazing, you could get a whole education on a lot of this just by going through that Instagram account, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 53:03

Oh my gosh, the amount of messages I've gotten of people who are like, I feel like I just went through a college course. Just I've spent weeks in your highlights and posts and blog and all these things. And I'm like, well, that's awesome. Because I would have loved six years ago when my health collapsed to had have all this information at my fingertips. I never wanted someone else to have to go through what I went through, where it's just like you feel like you have nowhere to turn. You don't understand why you're feeling the way you're feeling. You can't put symptoms and diagnoses of yourself even together. You're like, I just feel bad and doctors can't help me. So um, yeah, it's I'm such an introvert that always surprises people. Like the fact that I got up and spoke was like a big deal for me. I'm such an introverted person. So that account is solely to serve and help as many people as possible.

SPEAKER_01: 53:53

Awesome. Yeah, I would never suspect that your your talk was amazing. And I listened to it and I look at your Instagram, like, okay, this person's out there.

SPEAKER_00: 54:03

I just dabbled in the Reals world because apparently that's the thing that's you gotta do now. And I'm like, I was so terrified before I did it, but I'm like, we're just gonna, we're gonna go there. We're gonna do our best.

SPEAKER_01: 54:13

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you for doing it. Great. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share before we uh before we wrap up today? Anything that you wanted to bring up we didn't cover?

SPEAKER_00: 54:24

We covered a lot, I think just to edify what you said, to not get overwhelmed. Do the basics, get some basic labs done, go over the markers we discussed, you know, make some notes next to your own labs of potential things that could be going on. And I mean, you're real big on biohacking. Optimizing body function is like one of the best biohacks out there. So um start with the basics, and you know, I think not being overwhelmed is a big thing. So, other than that, I don't think I have anything else.

SPEAKER_01: 54:53

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Emily. It was very enlightening and educational. I learned a lot. I'm sure everybody listening will be. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 55:02

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 55:06

Thank you for being here with us today for this episode. If you'd like to get more information or work directly with Emily, uh go ahead and check her out on Instagram. You can find her at Emily Morrow. Um that's E-M-I-L-Y-M-O-R-R-O-W. Or her website is the EmilyMorrow.com. Both of these sites have amazing information on them, invaluable resources, really. So feel free to check them out even if you're not ready to get signed up or work with her directly. You can get a lot just from checking out the information. Thank you again for being here today and have a great rest of your day.