MCS sufferers: Environmental Medicine, the brain, and Pall

[Guest guest]

Environmental Medicine, the brain, and Pall

February 2, 2009 by Susie  

Who’s chirping about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity?

Dr. Nagy has a fabulous website called What You Need to Know About

Environmental Medicine.

Annie Hooper claims in the BC Local News that in manually creating neuroplastic

changes in her brain, she effectively rewired around the chemically injured

area, which successfully eliminated all symptoms of her Multiple Chemical

Sensitivity and electrical sensitivities.

About.com reports on Pall’s theories about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS

or ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (FMS). Pall, a professor of microbiology at

Washington State University, started looking into ME/CFS after he was diagnosed

with it. The essence of his theory is that short-term stressors cause a build up

of naturally occurring nitric oxide, which starts a vicious cycle and leads to

long-term illness. He calls this the NO/ONOO cycle.

After you investigate the preceding link on Pall’s work, take a look at

the email he is currently circulating:

The NO/ONOO-cycle has been recognized in many extraordinary ways over the past

several months, such that it should be viewed as THE predominant model of this

previously unexplained disease.

I was invited to give the initial address at the European Environmental Medicine

meeting in Wurzburg, a two day meeting that was largely dominated by the

NO/ONOO- cycle mechanism. This was part of a “grand European tour,” giving seven

talks in five countries. These included being the only non-European invited to

address the European Union Parliament (The Council of Nations) at a special

meeting on Environmental Medicine.

There were also two special mini-symposia organized to correspond to my visit in

Europe, another great honor. I gave talks in Italy, Germany, Austria,

Switzerland and France, including talks at three medical schools. So there has

been extraordinary recognition of the NO/ONOO- cycle mechanism, a mechanism that

is helping people in many countries around the world to actually lessen their

chemical sensitivity responses.

I might add that there was a book written in German on multiple chemical

sensitivity, with Hans-Ulrich Hill as first author, that is largely focussed on

the NO/ONOO- cycle mechanism of MCS.

While these are all extraordinary recognition for this science, the most

important recognition is elsewhere. I have been asked to write a review on MCS,

to be a chapter in a very prestigious multivolume set on toxicology, and that

review has been accepted and will be coming out this coming autumn. This is

extraordinarily important for at least four distinct reasons.

The first, of course is that MCS has been largely ignored by the toxicologists,

despite its high prevalence in the U.S. and in other populations because they

have felt that there was no reasonable explanation for it. Now, clearly, they

find that we now do have a compelling and well-supported explanation for MCS and

therefore it should be integrated into the larger framework of toxicology.

Secondly, the fact that they asked me to write this review is obviously

extraordinary recognition for my own work in developing, for the first time,

this detailed and well-supported mechanism, as we! ll as for the mechanism

itself.

Thirdly, this review is the longest such review on MCS ever written, as well as

the most extensively documented, having well over 400 citations in it.

Fourthly, there are several very important types of evidence that were new to

me, supporting the NO/ONOO- cycle mechanism that are reviewed in this chapter,

including important studies of the mechanism of toxic action of the seven groups

of chemicals implicated in MCS, including important animal model studies of MCS

implicating almost all of the NO/ONOO- cycle elements and including a series of

published studies of various objectively measurable responses to low level

chemical exposure, responses that are consistent with the NO/ONOO- cycle and

that should be developed as specific biomarker tests for MCS.

When this paper comes out, we as a community concerned about the suffering of

the millions of people who are chemically sensitive, will have a unique

opportunity to dramatically change the views of the general public, the news

media and even the court system of this horrible world-wide epidemic. That

opportunity will come because of the essential juxtaposition of rigorous science

and extraordinary recognition.

You are welcome to forward this as you wish.

L. Pall