Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Exists, But It's Not What You Think

For those who only have a hammer, everything is nails. The medical model continues searching and searching, in an endless spiral, the organic "failure" that causes Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS). The physiological organ or process responsible for perverse reactions to certain external agents.

In an insistence that has more to do with faith than with science, they still do not understand that SQM escapes the organicist assumptions of the biomedical paradigm.

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What is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity?

MCS, also known as idiopathic environmental intolerance, is a disorder in which exposure to certain agents such as odors, electromagnetic radiation or certain foods, causes symptoms such as pain, nausea, dizziness, tachycardia or sensation of He drowned.

Apparently, the first to name this set of symptoms was the American allergist Teron G. Randolph, back in the 50s. Since then, many and varied investigations have been carried out with patients suffering from MCS, analyzing each part of their organisms. From the simplest tests to the most advanced technology. From the analysis of the most prominent organs, to the tiny molecules, peptides or enzymes that populate our organism. From the organic to the psychological, analyzing possible conditions or the personality of those affected.

The conclusion has not changed over the years: there is nothing in the body of a person suffering from MCS that justifies these reactions.

However, researchers based on the biomedical model consider that it is a matter of searching harder, because it is a matter of time that the physiological structure or process underlying the disorder appears, allowing the development of a drug that reverses the supposed condition.

As if it were easy to create a drug that reverses a specific condition. Most drugs have been discovered by serendipity (chance) and, except for antibiotics, practically none have the ability to act on a specific cause. Most drugs act by reversing several processes at the same time, it just so happens that the pathobiological is among them.

These researchers think this way due to professional deformation. In Einstein's words, it is the theories that determine what we can observe, and from the organic framework, they have no other way of developing a theory that addresses the complexity of SQM.

Patient stoics, due to contemporary deformation, tend to see their problem according to the dominant theory of the era in which they have lived, which is none other than the organic theory. Ignoring other possibilities, they are convinced that the solution to their problem must come from the medical model: in your body there is something that does not work well, and it is a matter of time before they find it.

However, the organic cause does not appear and medicine continues without providing an effective remedy. This makes the patient with MCS have a difficult fit in the health system. This makes a pilgrimage through all medical specialties until it ends up in the mixed bag of disorders in which that the medical model is shipwrecked, very far from the respected patient who has suffered a stroke or has a broken leg.

They fight hard for their problem to be classified as a disease (there is a physical cause), because it is the only chance they have to be considered. However, paradoxically, each rung up the ladder of consideration as a disease, places a step further from the solution of the disorder, which cannot come hand in hand with the paradigm organicist.

Two keys to understanding SQM

Let's see two aspects of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that help to understand what it is:

1. Psychological vs Physiological

There is a serious misunderstanding about what psychological means. When it is suggested that MCS may have a mental origin, doctors and patients riot. But the truth is that when we talk about problems that arise between a person and reality (perfume, detergent, food, radiation...), the psychological must necessarily be considered, it cannot be Another way.

Because? Because no human being can come into direct contact with reality. If there is a true reality, you cannot access it, you do it through your perceptual system, a psychological process. Your senses capture a part of that reality and your mind makes sense of it based on its two main interests: survival and reproduction. Our senses have not evolved to show us reality as it is, they have evolved to increase our chances of survival.

Humans have reached an agreement on what reality is because we have the same perceptual system, not because we are endowed with senses that show us objective reality. The reality that a bat or a mollusk perceives is totally different from ours, and yet it has the same veracity.

Therefore, there is no true reality, there are as many realities as there are people, and what causes the disorder is not the perfume, radiation or food, is the image that an organism builds about perfume, radiation or food, which is very distinct.

All your interactions with reality are mediated by a perceptual system that, depending on what it perceives, will tend to respond in one way or another. Although the excesses of the biomedical model with the brain are enough to write an encyclopedia, it is important to clarify that this construction of reality is mental, not cerebral.

The brain is one of the parts of the conglomerate that allows sensation, not generates it.. Thinking that the brain itself is capable of generating sensations is the same as thinking that crying over the loss of a loved one is caused by the lacrimal glands.

Let's see an example:

Pain

Pain is not property of injuries or wounds. If you break a leg, that injury does not have the capacity to generate pain. What it generates is a signal that reports the damage. Being interpreted by the organism (not by the brain on its own) as a threat to your survival, triggers pain, a defense mechanism that prevents you from moving the area, helping the recovery.

Allergy

For example, pollen cannot cause any reaction in your body, it does not have that capacity. Pollen allergy arises when the body perceives pollen as threatening, and responds by closing the airways.

Fear

We colloquially say that a lion is scary, but the fear we are referring to is not owned by the lion. Fear is a consequence of the lion's body perceiving a threat, triggering the fight-flight response.

Detergent

The smell of a detergent, however strong it may be, cannot cause pain or nausea. These defensive reactions are a consequence of the threatening assessment that the organism makes of that strong odor.

The most important point is to understand that there is nothing in reality (radiation, food, smell…) that can cause the typical reactions of MCS (pain, nausea, diarrhea…).

As we see, between reality and our experience, there is always a mental process: nothing external can cause the usual responses of the SQM. At most we could consider that they are triggers for a threat assessment, which will trigger the corresponding defensive reactions.

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2. Physical damage vs defensive reaction

The damage caused by an external agent, the injury caused by touching a burning radiator, is one thing, and pain is quite another. Pain, as we have seen, is not a property of injuries, it is our body's reaction to a threat to our survival.

In these years, environmental medicine has emerged, the branch that studies diseases caused by toxins. A branch that has not yet realized that one thing is the effects that additives, dyes, preservatives or contamination, such as metabolic disruptions or fertility impairment... and the body's reaction to them is quite another, because:

• Diarrhea arises from the assessment of the existence of something threatening. Open floodgates with the goal is to get rid of it.
• Nausea appears due to the assessment of something threatening in the digestive system, or the external presence of something that should not be ingested. Vomiting is the mechanism to get rid of it.
• We have already seen that the pain reaction is always preceded by an assessment.
• A tachycardia is the result of another organismic evaluation, which concludes to accelerate the organism.

What matters is the interpretation of reality

Therefore, the SMQ cannot be triggered by external agents. It is caused by the interpretation of these external agents.

It is not the detergent, it is the opinion that your organism has of the detergent. Thinking that an external agent can cause these reactions is not understanding how we relate to reality, or how our body works. It is not reality that generates problems, it is the image we build of it.

The cause of MCS is a perception of threat. This is what triggers all other psychophysiological reactions (nausea, pain, vomiting, tachycardia...).

The problem with the biomedical paradigm is that it is focused on the organic without being able to achieve a global vision. The psychological is not understood, and when it is appealed to it seems to be referring to something invented, unreal or that can be overcome if the person really wants to... without understanding the depth of the concept.

The operation of the SQM is based on the logic of belief: the beliefs related to our self-deceptions are perceptual distortions or repeated experiences that structure knowledge. If you hear that a certain agent provokes these reactions in some people, and you start to doubt and feel fear If the same thing happens to you, your body can begin to launch responses such as nausea, pain, diarrhea, vomiting...

The next time you approach such an agent, the reaction will be even more automatic. The origin has been a perception, a psychological process; However, that does not mean that it is invented., unreal or caused by the same person.

The origin of a pain caused by a broken leg, and the origin of another caused by a strong smell of detergent, is the same: a mental assessment. Psychological does not mean invented.

The power of perception

If you think that a perception cannot cause these types of symptoms, you should know that it can be even worse.

Walter Cannon published many years ago, in 1942, an article entitled: Voodoo Death. As shown, a person's conviction in the power of a curse can kill them in a few hours. And it is not a psychological death, the symptoms it causes are real, so real that they lead to collapse and death. It also narrates another case in which a person about to die from the curse of a neighboring witch, saves his life shortly after forcing said witch to remove the curse.

As the psychologist Paul Watzlawick said, the simple conviction or attribution of certain meanings to perceptions, can have a powerful effect on a person's physical condition. person.

If a chair doesn't scream when a leg breaks, it's because does not have a perceptual system that perceives that damage and another reagent that helps it deal with that damage, pain. However, the ability of a human leg to generate pain is the same as that of a chair leg: none. We have a mind capable of thinking about possible dangers, and of activating defense mechanisms in case of perceiving a threat. A swallow, with a less developed and speculative intelligence, will never develop an MCS.

The stigmatization of the psychological, without understanding what it is and how it works, makes it impossible to understand this type of disorder.

How to deal with this disorder?

Brief Strategic Therapy is more than a psychological current, it is a school of thought dedicated to unraveling how humans relate to the world, to reality. Its basic premise is that the reality we perceive, including problems and pathologies, are the consequence of the interaction between each person and reality. Therefore there are as many realities as there are people, not one true reality. He considers that disorders are dysfunctional ways of perceiving reality, which result in dysfunctional reactions. If we change the way we perceive, the way we react also changes.

The solution is to teach your body that the agent it fears is not really dangerous.. Each avoidance (the star remedy prescribed to these patients) confirms to your body the danger of what is avoided, increasing the perception of threat and perpetuating the disorder.

The disorder exists and the suffering it causes also exists.. The mistake is in believing that if there is no organic failure, the body cannot cause these symptoms, denying the psychological without knowing what it is. The cause of MCS is a dysfunctional perception of threat, a psychological process. Your suffering starts from there, and everything that is not changing the perception that initiates the other reactions, will put you in a bottomless pit.

In short, the organic vision that predominates today, involves partial investigations unable to achieve a global vision. They focus on the tree and cannot see the forest.

The stigma that surrounds the psychological, together with a deep misunderstanding of what this concept means, means that, both patients as health professionals, do not take it into account, when it is the key to understanding and solving the disorder.

There are few agents as harmful to health as tobacco, repeatedly inhaled to the depth of the lungs. It causes damage, a lot, but it is not perceived as threatening by our body, it does not trigger pain or tachycardia. It is accepted in our society.

The more people talk about the disorder and the more it spreads, the affected there will be. The more avoidance is prescribed, the more difficult it will be for them to get out of the hell of MCS. One thing is the damage and another is the reaction to that damage, a process of mental evaluation.