For those who only have a hammer, everything is nails. The medical model continues to search and search, in an endless spiral, for 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 SQM escapes the supposed organicists of the biomedical paradigm.

What is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity?

SQM, also known as idiopathic environmental intolerance , is a disorder in which exposure to certain agents such as odours, electromagnetic radiation or certain foods, causes symptoms such as pain, nausea, dizziness, tachycardia or the sensation of drowning.

It seems that the first one to give a name to this set of symptoms was the North American allergist Teron G. Randolph, back in the 50s. Since then, many and varied investigations have been made with patients suffering from MMS, 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 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 organism of a person suffering from SQM that justifies these reactions .

However, researchers based on the biomedical model believe 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 will reverse the alleged condition.

Like it’s 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 once, the pathobiological one being among them.

These researchers think this way because of professional deformation . In Einstein’s words, it is the 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.

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 theory. Leaving aside 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 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 SQM patient a complicated fit in the health system. He or she goes on a pilgrimage through all medical specialties until they end up in the tailor’s box of disorders in which the medical model is shipwrecked, far from the respected patient who has suffered a stroke or has a broken leg.

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

Two keys to understanding SQM

Let’s look at two aspects of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity that help us understand what it is:

1. Psychological vs. physiological

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

Why? 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 perceptive system, a psychological process . Your senses grasp a part of that reality and your mind gives it a 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 perceptive 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, the radiation or the food, it is the image that an organism builds on the perfume, the radiation or the food, which is very different.

All your interactions with reality are mediated by a perceptive 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 give to write an encyclopedia, it is important to clarify that this construction on reality is mental, not cerebral.

The brain is one of the parts of the conglomerate that allows 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 tear glands.

Let’s see some examples:

Pain

Pain is not the property of injuries or wounds. If you break a leg, that injury does not have the capacity to generate pain . What it does generate is a signal that informs you of the damage. As it is interpreted by the body (not by the brain on its own) as a threat to your survival, it sets off pain, a defence mechanism that keeps you from moving the area, helping you to recover.

Allergy

For example, pollen can’t cause any reaction in your body, it doesn’t have that capacity. Pollen allergy arises when the body perceives pollen as threatening, and responds by closing off the airways.

Fear

Colloquially we say that a lion is scary, but that fear we refer to is not the property of the lion. Fear is a consequence of the perceived threat made by the lion’s body, setting in motion the fight-flight response.

Detergent

The smell of a detergent, however strong, cannot cause pain or nausea. These defensive reactions are a consequence of the organism’s threatening assessment of that strong smell.

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, diarrhoea…).

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

2. Physical damage vs. defensive reaction

The damage caused by an external agent, the injury caused by touching a burning radiator, is one thing, but the 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 these years environmental medicine has emerged, the branch that studies the 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 impairment of fertility … and quite another the reaction of the body to them, because:

  • Diarrhea arises from the assessment of the existence of something threatening. It opens floodgates in order to get rid of it.
  • Nausea is caused by the assessment of something threatening in the digestive system, or the external presence of something that should not be ingested. Vomiting is the mechanism for getting 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 by accelerating the organism.

What matters is the interpretation of reality

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

It’s not the detergent, it’s your body’s opinion of the detergent. To think that an external agent can provoke these reactions is not to 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 perceived threat . This is what triggers 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 reach a global vision. The psychological is not understood, and when it is appealed to it seems that it refers 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 belief : 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 fear that the same thing will happen to you, your organism may start to trigger responses such as nausea, pain, diarrhoea, 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, 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 the breakage of a 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 smell of a detergent, however strong, cannot cause pain or nausea.
These defensive reactions are a consequence of the organism’s threatening assessment of that strong smell.

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, diarrhoea…).

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

2.

As 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 its leg is broken, it is because it does not have a perceptive system that perceives that damage and another reactive system that helps it to deal with that damage, pain . However, the capacity to generate pain of a human leg is the same as that of the chair leg: none.
We have a mind capable of elucidating 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 a SQM.

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

How do you address this disorder?

Strategic Briefing 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 disorders to be dysfunctional ways of perceiving reality, resulting 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 organism the dangerousness of the avoidance, increasing the perception of threat and perpetuating the disorder.

The disorder exists and the suffering it causes, too . The error lies in believing that if there is no organic failure the organism cannot cause these symptoms, denying the psychological without knowing what it is. The cause of SQM 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 organicist vision that predominates nowadays, entails partial investigations that are incapable of achieving 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 that concept means, makes both patients and health professionals disregard it, when it is the key to understanding and solving the disorder.

Few agents are as harmful to health as tobacco, inhaled repeatedly deep into the lungs. It produces damage, a lot, but it is not perceived in a threatening way by our organism, it does not trigger pain, nor tachycardia. It is accepted in our society.

The more the disorder is talked about and the more it is spread, the more it is affected. The more avoidance is prescribed, the more difficult it will be for them to get out of the SQM hell. The damage is one thing, but the reaction to that damage is another, a process of mental assessment.