Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Exists, but it is 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 organ or physiological 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 MCS escapes the organicist assumptions of the biomedical paradigm.

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 a feeling of suffocation.

Apparently, the first to give a name to this set of symptoms was the North American allergist Teron G. Randolph, back in the 1950s. Since then, many and varied investigations have been done with patients who suffer from MCS, analyzing every part of their bodies. 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 body. From the organic to the psychological, analyzing possible conditioning or the personality of those affected.

The conclusion has not changed over the years: There is nothing in the body of a person who suffers 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 before the structure or physiological 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 so happens that the pathobiological process is among them.

These researchers think this way due to professional deformation In Einstein’s words, theories are what determine what we can observe, and from the organicist framework, there is no other way to develop a theory that addresses the complexity of MCS.

Stoic patients, 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 organicist one. Ignoring other possibilities, they are convinced that the solution to their problem must come from the medical model: There is something in your body that is not working 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 complicated fit in the health system. This pilgrimage through all medical specialties until ending up in the mixed bag of disorders in which the medical model founders, very far from the respected patient who has suffered a stroke or has a broken leg.

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

Two keys to understanding MCS

Let’s look at two aspects of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that help 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 are upset. But the truth is that, when we talk about problems that arise between a person and reality (perfume, detergent, food, radiation…), the psychological aspect must necessarily be considered, it cannot be any other 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 gives it meaning 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.

We humans have reached an agreement on what reality is because we have the same perceptual system, not because we are equipped 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, the radiation or the food, it is the image that an organism builds about the perfume, the radiation or the food, which is very different.

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 make it possible 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 by itself is capable of generating sensations is the same as thinking that crying over the loss of a loved one is caused by the tear glands.

Let’s look at some example:

Pain

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

Colloquially we say that a lion is scary, but that fear we are referring to is not the property of the lion. Fear is a consequence of the lion’s body’s perception of threat, triggering the fight-flight response.

Detergent

The smell of a detergent, no matter how strong, cannot cause pain or nausea. These defensive reactions are a consequence of the body’s threatening assessment 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 trigger the usual MCS responses. At most we could consider that they are triggers for a threat assessment, which will set in motion the corresponding defensive reactions.

2. Physical damage vs defensive reaction

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

In recent 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 pollution can cause in the body, such as metabolic disruptions or effects on fertility… and quite another is the reaction of the body. before them, because:

What matters is the interpretation of reality

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

It’s not the detergent, it’s your body’s opinion of the detergent. To think that an external agent can cause these reactions is to not understand how we relate to reality, nor 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 sets in motion all the 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 aspect is not understood, and when it is invoked it seems that it is alluding 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: Beliefs related to our self-deceptions are perceptual distortions or repeated experiences that structure knowledge. If you hear that a certain agent causes these reactions in some people, and you begin to doubt and feel afraid that the same thing will happen to you, your body may 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 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 within 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 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.

If a chair doesn’t scream when its leg breaks, it’s because It does not have a perceptual system that perceives that damage and another reactant that helps it deal with that damage, the pain However, the pain-generating capacity of a human leg 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 if we perceive a threat. A swallow, with a less developed and speculative intelligence, will never develop MCS.

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

How to address 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. 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, too The error 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 anything other than changing the perception that initiates the other reactions will put you in a bottomless pit.

In short, the organicist vision that predominates today entails partial research incapable of achieving a global vision. They focus on the tree and cannot see the forest.

The stigma that surrounds psychology, together with a deep misunderstanding of what that concept means, means that both patients and 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, inhaled repeatedly to the depths of the lungs. It causes damage, a lot, but it is not perceived in a threatening way 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 more affected there will be. The more avoidance is prescribed, the harder it will be for them to get out of the hell of MCS. Damage is one thing and the reaction to that damage is another, a mental assessment process.