Multiple Chemical Sensitivity exists, but it’s not what you think it is

To understand this disorder, it is necessary to step outside the medical-organizational model.

For those who only have a hammer, everything is nails. The medical model keeps searching and searching, in an endless spiral, for the organic "failure" that causes Multiple Chemical Disorder, the organic "failure" that causes Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS).. The organ or physiological process responsible for the 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?

MQS, also known as idiopathic environmental intoleranceallergic allergy, 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 choking sensation.

It seems that the first person to give a name to this set of symptoms was the American allergist Teron G. Randolph, back in the 1950's. Since then, many and varied investigations have been carried out on patients suffering 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 organism. 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 organism of a person suffering from MCS that justifies these reactions..

However, researchers based on the biomedical model believe that it is a matter of looking harder, because it is a matter of time before the physiological structure or process underlying the disorder appears, allowing the development of a drug that reverses the alleged 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, virtually none have the ability to act on a specific cause. Most drugs act by reversing several processes at the same time, with the pathobiological one being among them.

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

The stoic patients, due to contemporary deformation, tend to see their problem according to the dominant theory of the era in which they live, 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 wrong with their organism, and it is only a matter of time before they find it.

However, the organic cause does not appear and medicine continues to fail to provide an effective remedy. This makes it difficult for the patient with MCS to fit into the health care system. The patient wanders through all the medical specialties until he or she ends up in the bottom drawer of disorders in which the medical model is shipwrecked, far removed 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 step up the ladder of consideration as a disease places them one step further away from the solution of the disorder, which cannot come from the organicist paradigm.

Two keys to understanding MCS

Let us look at 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 implied that MCS may have a mental origin, doctors and patients revolt. 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 otherwise.

Why should it be otherwise? Because no human being can come into direct contact with reality. If there is a true reality, you can't access it, you access 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 come to agree 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 perceived by a bat or a mollusk is totally different from ours, and yet it has the same veracity.

Therefore, there is no one 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 constructs 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 mismanagement of the biomedical model with the brain is 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 enables sensation, not generates it.. To think 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 lacrimal glands.

Let's look at some examples:

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 you of the damage. When interpreted by the body (not by the brain on its own) as a threat to your survival, it triggers pain, a defense mechanism that keeps you from moving the area and aids recovery.

Allergy

For example, pollen cannot provoke any reaction in your body, it does not have that ability. 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 the fear we are referring to is not the property of the lion. Fear is a consequence of the lion's perception of threat, which triggers the fight-flight response.

Detergent

The odor of a detergent, however strong it may be, cannot provoke pain or nausea. These defensive reactions are a consequence of the organism's threatening evaluation of this strong odor.

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

As we can see, between the reality and our experience, there is always a mental processNothing external can provoke the usual responses of the QMS. At most we could consider that they are triggers of a threat assessment, which will set in motion the corresponding defensive reactions.

2. Physical harm vs. defensive reaction

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

In recent years, environmental medicine, the branch that studies diseases caused by toxins, has emerged.. A branch that has not yet realized that one thing are the effects that additives, colorants, preservatives or pollution can cause in the organism, such as metabolic disruptions or fertility affectation... and quite another the reaction of the organism to them, because:

• A diarrhea arises from the assessment of the existence of something threatening. It opens floodgates with the objective of getting rid of it.
• Nausea appears due to the evaluation 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 evaluation.
• A tachycardia is the result of another organismic evaluation, which concludes by accelerating the organism.

What matters is the interpretation of reality

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

It is not the detergent, it is your body's opinion of the detergent. To think that an external agent can provoke these reactions is to not understand how we relate to reality, nor how our organism works. It is not reality that generates problems, it is the image we build of it.

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

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

The functioning of SQM is based on the logic of beliefBeliefs 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 fear that the same thing will happen to you, your organism may start to trigger 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 that it is caused by the agent.However, this does not mean that it is invented, unreal or that it is provoked by the person himself.

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 such symptoms, you should know that it can be even worse.

Walter Cannon published already many years ago, in 1942, an article entitled: Voodoo Death. As it is shown, a person's conviction in the power of a curse can kill him 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. He also narrates another case in which a person about to die from the curse of a neighboring witchdoctor, saves his life shortly after forcing the witchdoctor to remove the curse.

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

If a chair does not scream when a leg breaks off, it is because it does not have a perceptual system that perceives that damage and a reactive system that helps it cope 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 in case of perceived threat. A swallow, with a less developed and speculative intelligence, will never develop an MDS.

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 approach this disorder?

Brief Strategic Therapy is more than a psychological trend, it is a school of thought dedicated to unraveling how humans relate to the world, to reality. 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 we also change the way we react.

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

The disorder exists and so does the suffering it causes.. The mistake is in believing that if there is no organic failure the organism cannot provoke 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 does not change the perception that initiates the other reactions, will put you in a bottomless pit.

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

The stigma surrounding the psychological, together with a profound lack of understanding of what this 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, repeatedly inhaled deep into the lungs. It causes harm, a lot of it, but it is not perceived as threatening by our organism, it does not trigger pain or tachycardia. It is accepted in our society.

The more the disorder is talked about and the more it spreads, the more people will be affected. 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 mental assessment process.