What is Environmental Medicine?
 

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Environmental Medicine is that specialty in medicine in which doctors assist patients in uncovering the cause and effect relationship between their environment and their ill health, and help them learn to avoid these inciting factors.

The term "allergy" was created to describe an abnormal response to substances that your system recognizes as foreign which do not cause reactions in most people. Substances that cause allergies include pollens, dander, mold, dust, foods, chemicals, drugs, air pollution, and fragrances. These substances are called "allergens" or "antigens". Allergy can produce symptoms in almost every organ of the body and often masquerades as other diseases. Allergy can affect your skin, eyes, ears, nose, throat, lungs, stomach, bladder, vagina, muscles, joints and your entire nervous system, including your brain.

For an overview of symptoms caused by allergy and conditions, please click here.  You can click on any symptom to see the outcome of treating the causes.

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Heredity - The ability to have an allergic reaction appears to be hereditary. Somewhere in your family somebody slipped you some allergic genes. The more people, and the more severe the allergies, the earlier you are likely to experience allergic manifestations. In childhood, more boys than girls have allergies. In adults, the ratio is reversed and more women have allergies, especially beginning at age thirty and lasting until menopause. After that the incidence is about the same for men and women. For some people there is a hormonal component. By the way, parents and children may be allergic to different things.

Infection - It is possible to develop allergic sensitivities after a bout of severe infection -- viral, bacterial or fungal.

Chemical Exposure - Heavy exposure to pesticides or other petrochemicals can lead to the development of allergic reactions.

Stress - An increased stress load, whether emotional or physical, positive or negative, can play a role in allergies. Getting married or having a baby are happy events, but stressful.

Nutrition - Poor nutritional habits contribute to the development of allergies as well as other illnesses.

In many cases, the allergies have existed for a while, but gradually become worse until you are forced to do something about them. Your ability to adapt to these stresses finally runs out.

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Over 400 physicians have grouped together to form the AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE in the U.S, Canada, Australia, and England to study and treat people with illnesses or health problems caused by adverse, allergic or toxic reactions to a wide variety of environmental substances.

To diagnose your condition, a detailed environmental history must be taken by your physician. You may be asked to keep a food and behavior diary to complete the history. Each complaint or symptom is traced chronologically, possible cause and effect relationships to environmental exposures are explored. This history, coupled with an objective physical examination leads to a provisional diagnosis which is used to direct the "testing". The "testing" determines those substances causing your symptoms and which treatment will improve your condition.

Testing is done in the physician's office by a trained technician under the supervision of the physician. One or more of the following procedures may be used:

• Intracutaneous 1:5 serial dilution titration - Patient is given an amount of an allergen into the skin. A wheal, about the size of a mosquito bite forms; if allergic, the size of the wheal will increase within 10 minutes.   For more details on this method, please click here.

• Clinical titration - Excitants (common foods and/or environmental chemicals) are given intracutaneously (shot in the arm) or sublingually (drops under the tongue) to provoke the allergic reaction.

• Reaction - Reactions are measured to determine degree of sensitivity.

• Neutralization - Patient is treated with a dose of allergen too small to produce a reaction but large enough to prevent one, enabling the patient to tolerate unavoidable, offending substances.

• Individual deliberate feeding tests, elimination diets and rotary diversified diets - To determine food allergies, patient abstains from eating certain foods for a period of time, usually three to five days, after which food is introduced and reactions are measured.

• Comprehensive environmental control program - Hospitalization. Patient is put in a controlled environment, substances are introduced one at a time, and reactions are recorded. This is the most advanced method but is least frequently required.

Once tests are completed and evaluated, one or more of the following treatments are prescribed by the physician to reduce or eliminate your symptoms:

Drugs are avoided as much as possible.

It is unlikely that these treatments will "cure" an allergy. However, with the help of a reputable physician referred by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, persons with moderate or severe allergies can be taught to live comfortably in today's world without constant medication or fear of a reaction.