What Is MCS?
"What is MCS? How does a person get it?"
It can come on quickly--almost overnight--or it can creep in little by little. It can be little more than a nuisance, or it can be extremely debilitating. It can try a person's patience to the limits and can test lifelong friendships. It is MCS, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.
What is this troublesome illness, also known as Environmental Illness (EI) or Multiple Enzyme Dysfunction (MED)? Simply put, it means that a person's body loses the ability to break down substances often found in the world around us. How does this happen?
Though many persons report their chemical sensitivities coming on suddenly, there is usually some pre-existing condition that made the person more susceptible to whatever onslaught succeeded in breaking down the body's defenses. After all, whether the initial challenge was an exposure to pesticide, days spent working in a new building, or whatever else, there are usually others who were not affected by the challenge, or at least not to the same extent. Often it is the person who is chronically dehydrated, gets too little sleep, has nutritional deficiencies, and is under too much stress who will be first to feel the effects of an environmental challenge. Without the necessary resources needed to meet the challenge, the body's ability to fight off future challenges is severely altered.
Consider what happens when someone is exposed to a large toxic dose of some chemical or heavy metal.
In order to attack these monster toxins, the body gathers together all its resources, including enzymes and fighter cells responsible for breaking down smaller chemicals like those in perfumes and food additives. These smaller fighting cells combine to form monster cells for breaking down the big bad toxin. But often the big toxin proves to be too much and ends up destroying these big monster cells. As a result the body is left defenseless from that time on against the smaller toxins whose enzymes have just been sacrificed.
Thus it is not unusual for someone to find, after they have bug-bombed their house or worked several days in a new building, that they are no longer able to tolerate hair spray, perfume, or laundry products. If a person continues to have challenges to his or her immune system on a continual basis, they may get to the point where they can barely function in this chemical-laden world. Too, in some cases, the enzymes are not destroyed but are not able to function due to a low body temperature. Whether due to a lack of enzymes or an inhibiting of enzyme function due to body temperature, the situation can often be improved by strict attention to diet and nutrition.
The problem of chemical sensitivities is a complex one, and many excellent books have been written on the subject by qualified authors. I highly recommend such reading, as getting a better understanding of what is going on in the chemically-sensitive body is a great aid to coping with the problem.
© Dorothy Herrmann 2003
edited 2007
