“I don’t think there’s any help for me,” Alice lamented.
After years of struggling with vexing symptoms ranging from depression to anxiety to “brain fog,” combined with a slew of physical ills that came and went with ghost-like inscrutability, she appeared at my door. In her wake stood a long chain of doctors, diagnostic tests, mental health types and non-traditional healers and nostrums.
After her health, both mental and physical, deteriorated in her late 20s, she was slapped with dozens of labels, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even illness anxiety disorder (hypochondria). But nothing fit, and each applicable treatment proved useless. Too often, she was told, “It’s all in your head.”
Alice is not unique. I have visited with many mentally suffering souls who can’t get a straight answer for what ails them, let alone effective treatment. Well-meaning healers of many persuasions offer them various theories about what might be amiss, and suggest a wide range of remedies, from the mainstream to the experimental to the lunatic fringe. But what they can’t offer is an answer, which is, above all else, what folks like Alice seek.
Toxic Environment
Listening to her, I recalled a theory, much maligned by some businesses and politicians, about what may be at the root of such enigmatic maladies—poisoning. No, I’m not suggesting some malevolent soul was slipping arsenic or dioxin into Alice’s coffee. But I did wonder if she wasn’t suffering the effects of insidious environmental toxins permeating our bodies, as they have increasingly since the advent of the industrial revolution.
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Now, before dismissing me as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, consider that very few of the thousands of manmade chemicals now found in the human body have been thoroughly tested for their impact on our health, both physical and mental. What’s more, the chemical industry adds scores of new ones each year. They are ubiquitous in food, cosmetics, the air, soil, water, household chemicals, furniture, bedding, cleaning products . . . the list is long.
What we can say with some certainty, based on reliable research from non-industry sources, is that pesticides, herbicides, mercury, lead and endocrine disruptors, among other toxins, are dangerous indeed. Some of these substances are “forever chemicals,” meaning they remain in our bodies for long periods, if not permanently. Finally, air pollution from particulate matter and airborne chemicals is among the greatest threats to human health, shortening the lives of billions.
No “Safe Levels”
Scores of environmental poisons adversely influence the brain, as well as the endocrine system. And because so-called “safe levels” for many of these substances have not been reliably established, we can’t rule out their role in causing or worsening mental disorders. Which may explain, in part, why some people fail to improve despite psychotherapy and medications. With some individuals, the potential cause — environmental poisoning — may remain untreated.
Reassurances from the chemical industry, often supported by the FDA, that these substances, while toxic, are not present in our bodies in sufficient amounts to do grave harm come with a large dollop of economic self-interest. Relying on Monsanto, Dupont and their counterparts to ignore profits in deference to safeguarding our health is like asking a fox to guard the hen house.
Sadly, we are playing Russian chemical roulette with our physical and mental well-being, and it seems probable some of us are figuratively getting our heads blown off. Alice, and other folks like her, may be among the losers. Given the paucity of research, we simply don’t know for certain if mental health disorders may be caused or exacerbated by environmental toxins. However, what we do know is that the brain, like any other organ in the body, can be poisoned. If and when that occurs, some of the signs and symptoms of this toxicity may include cognitive dysfunction and mental illness.
Presently, the only recourse for folks like Alice is to educate themselves, minimize exposure to environmental toxins, and, in some instances, work with a physician specializing in functional or integrative medicine.
But it comes down to this. If we poison our world, we poison our minds.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
To read more Out of My Mind columns by Philip Chard, click here.
