What is Environmental Medicine?

First of all, environmental medicine does not reject modern medicine. In certain acute and traumatic situations, head for your nearest hospital. Be grateful for the research and technological progress which has allowed patients to survive incidents that would have meant certain death at one time in history. This progress has also allowed for an improved quality of life in patients with congenital or acquired defects. However, for many chronic or degenerative health problems, environmental medicine offers a unique perspective founded on scientific principles.

Environmental medicine assesses the effects of the "total load" of environmental factors that may compromise an individual’s health. The emphasis is on dietary and lifestyle habits, chemicals, water, indoor and outdoor air quality at home, work and school. It considers each patient as a unique individual exposed to a unique set of circumstances and thus needing individualized therapy. Although there are individuals who develop severe hypersensitivity disorders, environmental medicine more commonly treats a wide variety of disorders of varying degrees of severity in both adults and children. Almost every disease and disorder–in addition to genetic susceptibility–has some underlying environmental factors.

A Real Problem

Many chronic and degenerative illnesses today are the result of poor lifestyle habits and/or exposure to a variety of environmental factors which can cause multi-systemic disorders. The central nervous system is often affected with complaints of fatigue, poor concentration, decreased short-term memory, distractibility, mood swings or depression. Other organ systems involved can result in headaches, digestive problems, muscular and joint pains, recurrent vaginal, respiratory, ear, nose and throat problems, hives or allergies.

Physical and mental symptoms can often leave a patient in a general state of misery for years. Such patients are sometimes dismissed out of hand and treated as suffering from psychosomatic illness. Other times, only symptoms are treated while the underlying causes of illness are ignored. Most medical doctors aren’t trained in relating physical or psychological signs and symptoms to a patient’s environmental exposures or diet.

With a variety of complaints and the absence of a definitive biological marker upon which to hang a diagnosis, many people are told that they must be suffering from "stress." Stress is the biological response in the brain to a perceived threat. A common cause of a stress response is indeed psychological–such as anxiety or depression. However, it must be emphasized that the stress response in the brain can be induced by other factors as well.

Environmental medicine considers four categories of environmental factors which affect health. A person may be exposed to one or all four categories--increasing his/her total load:

1. Biological Factors: bacteria, viruses, molds, candida, parasites, foods, animal dander, dust and pollen from trees, grasses and weeds.


2. Chemical factors: substances such as formaldehyde, phenol, solvents, petroleum products, pesticides, herbicides, PCBs, heavy metals, asbestos, chlorine, sulfur dioxide, alcohol, tobacco and medications.


3. Physical Factors: heat, cold, weather cycles, noise, positive and negative ions, electromagnetic radiation, X-rays, nuclear explosions, reactor accidents and radon gas.


4. Psychological factors: prolonged psychological stress in personal relationships or at work, a death in the family, fire, bankruptcy or job loss.

We deal with many minor stresses on a daily level. These are usually handled well and do not provoke any measurable response.

The concept of adaptation–researched and proven on laboratory animals by Austrian physiologist Hans Selye–was introduced to the practice of medicine by Dr Theron Randolph, the father of environmental medicine. Adaptation (called tolerance, acclimatization or addiction) brings about what is called a "masking" phenomenon. This results in many patients and physicians missing the effect of a particular substance (be it food or toxin) on an individual’s health.

If the stress load is big enough and goes on for a long enough period of time, chronic changes will occur which lower the threshold for tolerating stress. Minor stresses start to give aggravated responses, or a high stress incident can become the proverbial "straw that breaks the camel’s back." We have now "maladapted" to our stress and become sick.

Organ systems which are affected by chronic stress include the neurological, endocrinological and immune system. Physiological chemicals known as neurotransmitters, hormones and others are released which react with specific receptors in any part of the body. Stress can then initiate or aggravate symptoms from any organ system.

An individual’s state of health is an expression of the interplay of the above factors and the patient’s own genetic endowment, nutritional status and unique biological individuality. The same stressors can produce different symptoms in different patients.