DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A DOCTOR, this is not medical advice, only my experience. I have always gone to see doctors, its just they couldn’t help my MCS. I am still on the quest to find a doctor who will listen to me and seriously address my requests. Medical professionals have plenty of knowledge about things that I don’t have. I even went to a doctor last week. Of course the medical industry has all kinds of problems, which is probably why you are even reading this.
When I was sick and seriously detoxing, I spent all of my available money on supplements, food, getting my mercury amalgams removed, air purifiers, glass blender, plastic-free, organic t-shirts, plastic-free coffee press, big air cleaning plants etc and a hundred other toxic items I replaced for nontoxic. When I felt I had the extra money to visit a naturopath; I talked to an “MCS qualified” one on the phone for a few minutes. She just starts talking about about how she is going to give me some kind of allergy related shots. I realize this is going to cost me monthly, forever. She never asked me any questions. I never went. I was already on the mend by then, but had I not been, I may have been grateful for those shots.
I do have an acupuncturist which my insurance pays for, who helps me immensely.
The first day I went to see her, I had to wear a mask because it was in a clinic and the formaldehyde toxic floor cleaners used by hospitals and clinics used to make me very sick. That was the last time I ever wore a mask anywhere and I could never even smell that floor cleaner again. Pretty awesome!
BTW, I got hooked up with that acupuncturist after finally getting angry at all of the doctors who wouldn’t even be my doctor. This one particular doc said ‘she had never heard of MCS”, nor had her boss. They weren’t willing to Google it or take me on as a patient. My last general practitioner fired me as a patient, so I needed a GP. By now, I had been to 6 or 7 doctors and the only thing I got was sick from the perfume and floor cleaners in the offices.
I had always been ‘nice’ and respectful to my doctors, but had now lost patience. I was so sick and so alone that I called and left an angry message, and at the end, finally exclaiming “a_hole doctors” and hung up.
She heard what I was saying and hooked me up with the acupuncturist. That was a great lesson; being nice and wanting everyone to like you is Not a good strategy for recovering from MCS.
If you can find and afford a great naturopath that is great. My personal opinion is that many of them don’t really understand MCS at all. They frequently talk like experts, but say things that I know, by experience, are not true. They say ‘it’s all the liver’ or the adrenals or an allergy. I think MCS is a highly complex illness involving many systems. I believe that coffee enema & sauna are some of the most effective treatments, but a naturopath generally won’t send you home to do that. Its hard to teach and they don’t want to deal with you being your own doc. You could do something really stupid and end up worse off.
They can be too gentle, giving a few herbs or homeopathic pills or too harsh and fast by detoxing heavy metals with the IV (DMSO-I think it’s called). You can actually get quite sick from chelation therapy if you are very toxic.
My opinion is that most naturopaths have their favorite therapies and go with those. Also, they don’t explain all of the work each patient must do on their own in order to get well. They may prefer colonics over coffee enemas, the colonics being $100 a pop (and they want you to do 10) and the coffee enema free.
Environmental illness and MCS are relatively new conditions and I don’t think anyone has all the answers.
I am really not a big fan of naturopaths for MCS, unless they are highly recommended and you have talked to patients who have been cured by them. My friend was cured of lupus six years ago and schizophrenia (caused by the lupus) by Dr Fan in Rockville, Md. I was going to see her, but it’s too far and by then I was feeling good.
What I am saying, is that you can spend a lot of money on all kinds of doctors and may not get the help you need. If I had that much money, I would go to the Dr Rhea MCS clinic in Texas. Even from there, Dr Rhea says MCS recovery is largely based on what the patient is willing to do when they get home from the clinic. So even with the best of doctors MCS usually requires a lot of work by the patient.
When I was sick, I realized the seriousness of the illness, even though I felt fine if I didn’t go anywhere. I played “MCS rehab” at home doing daily coffee enema, sauna at the gym, got rid of toxins in my home, immediately got counseling to start taking care of the emotional healing(on the advice of one friend who cured a very bad illness that way), I read all of the books, took the supplements and devoted myself to getting well. I had the wisdom to realize that I had better drop everything else in my life and get well. MCS does damage to your body and can get worse very quickly.
After a good long time and quite a bit of money spent on food, supplements,making my bedroom and home nontoxic, books, trying new therapies, etc, I turned a corner and was on the road to recovery. I couldn’t buy everything all at once. I was so tired and broke. I did what I could.
Everybody is different, and has their own capacities and limitations; but learning about health and trying every reasonable approach I think is why I got well, when so many other people don’t. ( I am not saying that if you are not well, you haven’t tried hard enough. I think every MCS case is different, I caught mine early) It helped that my best friend was a self-healed cancer survivor and knew a lot about health and nutrition, and I knew quite a bit as well.
It really pays to study and learn. I feel very empowered about my health.
If you have a good doctor, great, but many really don’t know how to treat MCS, even though they think they do.
Since writing this article, I have focused greatly on the parasympathetic nervous system, breathing, the energetic & mind/body healing. It has done great healing for the underlying causes and on going complete healing(I still have some issues).