What happens when someone feels exhausted, foggy, anxious, or simply not like themselves, but every test comes back “normal”?
For Dr. Eboni Cornish, that is often where the investigation begins.
A functional medicine physician specializing in brain health and Lyme disease and the President-Elect of ILADS, Dr. Cornish joined Sam Tejada, CEO and Founder of Liquivida®, on “A Healthy Point of View” podcast to discuss neural longevity, chronic illness, and why understanding the root cause of a problem can sometimes require looking far beyond the obvious.
Sam introduced her not simply as a doctor, but as a medical detective, a description that fits the way she approaches complicated cases. Her work often involves patients who have already tried multiple treatments but still don’t understand why they aren’t getting better.
Looking at Brain Health Before There Is a Crisis
Dr. Cornish calls her approach neural longevity.
For her, brain health shouldn’t be something people start thinking about only when they reach old age or become concerned about dementia. The brain influences nearly every part of daily life, and problems can show up much earlier through fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, anxiety, difficulty finding words, or simply feeling different from normal.
At Amen Clinics, where she uses SPECT brain imaging, Cornish looks at how different areas of the brain are functioning and whether there are signs of trauma or other problems.
What makes the process interesting is what happens after the scan.
A patient might already be doing everything they believe they should be doing, eating well, exercising, taking supplements, or exploring biohacking, but still feel foggy. That leads Cornish to ask different questions.
Could there have been an undiagnosed concussion? Sleep apnea? An infection? Toxin exposure? A problem with gut health?
Sometimes, the brain provides a clue that routine laboratory testing has missed.
Lyme Disease Could Be Hiding Behind These Brain Symptoms | Dr. Eboni Cornish | Ep. 164
When “Normal” Tests Don’t Explain How Someone Feels
One of the problems Cornish sees is that symptoms such as chronic fatigue, brain fog, or mild memory and word-finding difficulties can be difficult to explain.
A person may have normal lab results and still know that something isn’t right.
Cornish believes those symptoms deserve to be investigated rather than dismissed.
She also sees a connection between brain health and mental health. Depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric symptoms can sometimes be approached too narrowly, without asking whether there could be underlying biological factors contributing to what a person is experiencing.
That doesn’t mean every mental health problem has a hidden infection or physical cause. Rather, Cornish’s approach is to keep asking questions when the pieces don’t seem to fit.
Lyme Disease: One of Medicine’s Great Imitators
That becomes particularly important in her work with Lyme disease.
Lyme disease can present with a wide range of symptoms, making it difficult to identify in some patients. During the conversation, Sam and Cornish discussed how chronic tick-borne illnesses can overlap with neurological and cognitive problems.
For Cornish, this is another reason to think like a detective.
Instead of focusing on one symptom in isolation, she considers the entire picture: brain function, inflammation, infections, sleep, gut health, hormones, environmental exposures, and a patient’s history.
The goal is not to assume that Lyme disease explains everything. It is to avoid overlooking it when the patient’s story warrants further investigation.
The Case That Changed How She Looked at Oral Health
One of Cornish’s patient stories demonstrated just how unexpected the source of a problem can be.
She described a young former NFL player who had experienced concussions and traumatic brain injury and was struggling with extremely low testosterone, confusion, and fatigue.
After treatment aimed at improving his brain health, his brain scan improved, but his hormone problems continued.
Cornish began investigating his environment and found elevated mold-related markers. Treating the mold exposure and having the patient leave his home did not solve the problem.
So she kept looking.
Eventually, she investigated his oral health and discovered what she described as a mold-affected dental implant. After the implant was removed by a biological dentist, his inflammatory markers improved, and his hormones began responding to treatment.
For Cornish, the case changed the way she thought about oral health and reinforced the importance of continuing the investigation when the first answer isn’t the right answer.
Don’t Biohack Before You Know What You’re Fixing
The conversation also moved into the growing world of biohacking.
With supplements, peptides, NAD-related products, specialized diets, and technologies designed to optimize health becoming increasingly popular, Cornish’s advice was to start with something less exciting: diagnostics.
She believes people should understand what is actually happening in their bodies before spending heavily on treatments designed to optimize performance.
As she put it during the conversation, you can’t simply biohack your way out of an untreated infection, chronic mold exposure, traumatic brain injury, sleep apnea, or poor gut health.
She recommends beginning with basic markers, including C-reactive protein, a lipid panel, omega levels, vitamin D, glucose and insulin markers, thyroid function, and sex hormones.
If those results are normal but the person still doesn’t feel well, that is when she believes it may be time to investigate more deeply, including chronic infections, Lyme disease and co-infections, viruses, gut health, parasites, mold, toxins, and heavy metals.
The point isn’t to order every test available.
It’s to ask the right question before reaching for another treatment.
Health Has to Be Practical
Cornish also recognizes that not everyone can afford advanced imaging, extensive testing, or a cabinet full of supplements.
That’s why her approach isn’t limited to expensive interventions.
Sleep, movement, nutrition, sunlight, stress management, and making better everyday choices can all play a role. She also emphasized meeting people where they are instead of giving patients unrealistic instructions.
A recommendation only works if someone can actually follow it.
That same philosophy applies to food. Rather than asking a patient to completely overhaul their diet overnight, Cornish looks for one change they are willing to make and builds from there.
Small changes can become sustainable changes.
Why Am I Not Better?
Cornish is continuing this work through a forthcoming book titled Why Am I Not Better?
The book will focus on patients who remained sick despite being told their laboratory results were normal. Through their stories, she hopes to show readers why sometimes it takes a deeper investigation to understand what is happening.
That idea captures the central message of her conversation with Sam.
A normal test does not necessarily explain how someone feels.
Sometimes, it means there is another question to ask.
And for people who have spent months or years searching for an explanation, Cornish’s final message was perhaps the most important one: don’t give up hope.
There are doctors continuing to investigate complicated cases. There are researchers looking for answers. And there are patients who eventually discover what was being missed.
For Dr. Cornish, medicine is not always about having the answer immediately.
Sometimes, it is about being willing to keep looking.