Aaron Goodman: Welcome to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm Aaron Goodman, host and creator of the show. I'm a longtime journalist, documentary maker, university instructor, and communication studies researcher, and I've lived with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or MCS, for years. MCS is also known as chemical intolerance and toxicant induced loss of tolerance, or TILT.

The illness affects millions around the world. And the number of people with MCS is rising just about everywhere. Living with MCS means dealing with a range of overlapping symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, muscle and joint pain, headaches, eye irritation, confusion, memory loss, rashes and more. 

Trace amounts of chemicals and synthetic fragrances in household and personal care products, pesticide, paint, construction materials, cigarette smoke, and more can spark a cascade of debilitating symptoms, and finding accommodation can be very complicated. Dismissed by healthcare providers, employers, and employers, even loved ones, many feel misunderstood, isolated, and invisible. 

This podcast aims to change that. We delve into the latest research and speak with all kinds of people impacted by MCS. You'll gain important knowledge, a sense of validation, and learn about navigating the realities of life with MCS. We also explore wider issues connected to toxic chemical pollution and how individuals and communities are pushing back against it and the harms it causes.

I'm really excited to share this episode with you. It's rare to meet a researcher and healthcare worker who also has personal lived experience with MCS. My guest in this episode does, and she has so much knowledge to share. Dr. Wasik is a medical herbalist originally from Poland and is now based in Helsinki, Finland. Dr. Wasik holds a doctorate degree from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Helsinki in Finland, a Master of Science degree in biotechnology and molecular biology from the University of Wroclaw in Poland, and a diploma in herbal medicine from the United Kingdom.

In our conversation, you'll hear Dr. Wasik explore her own experiences with MCS and related conditions, how exposure to toxic mold can lead to and contribute to MCS, how the chemical industry influences research and medicine in order to dismiss MCS, how she thinks more and more people will develop MCS going forward, and how herbal medicine can assist people with the illness.

[00:03:26] Anita W.: Thank you for having me.

[00:03:29] Aaron Goodman: There's a lot that I'd like to talk with you about. You have such an interesting background. Do you want to talk a little bit about your experiences with health, with getting ill?

[00:03:39] Anita W.: Yes. So it all started from my own journey. That was 2016 when I returned home from one trip and I began to feel unwell. And I visited doctor after doctor, even specialists in tropical medicine, hoping that one of them could give me an answer, which I didn't get.

So that was the moment I decided to study herbal medicine to find the root causes of my ongoing health problems. So as I started to feel a bit better and I feel like I was moving forward with my health. Then 2018 hit and suddenly new symptoms appeared. I start to have chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, difficulty breathing, and constantly increasing sensitivities to food, smells, and chemicals.

And week after week, I was becoming more weaker and sicker, so of course I visited doctors to get any tests running to explain the root causes of my health problems, I felt only that I was actually misunderstood, and some doctors even pointed that it's all in my head. As a scientist, I managed to connect the dots and realize that besides MCS, I had also mold toxicity, many chronic hidden infection, including Lyme disease and coinfections.

MCS, this disease is very debilitating. So I lost my job. I lost my financial stability, many friends, colleagues, relationship.

So today I still have some sensitivities, but they are nothing compared to what I faced a few years ago.

[00:05:33] Aaron Goodman: Wow. Do you happen to know what the trigger was? Or do you think it was something that built up over time?

[00:05:42] Anita W.: I believe there were many factors. For around 15 years, I was working in scientific laboratories with a lot of chemicals, you know, those chemicals are immunotoxic, neurotoxic, and at the same time, I was in many buildings that were affected with moisture and actually mold.

So I believe that there is a combination of exactly the stress from environment means chemical environment at work, combined with the mold. And also the hidden infections which I had.

[00:06:22] Aaron Goodman: Since you mentioned mold, Dr. Wasik, is it the case that in Scandinavia and Finland, there is quite a lot of sick building syndrome. Do you want to talk a little bit about what sick building syndrome is for people with MCS, how they can understand it?

[00:06:42] Anita W.: So when we talk about sick building syndrome, it tells about the buildings that were water damaged and developed any microbial overgrow, including the mold.

So water damage building actually contains several toxic compounds. They are not just a mold and mycotoxins, means mold toxins. That will affect the immuno nervous system and also our detoxification system. Yes. First, when the toxins enter the body, they irritate and over activate our immune system. As second, the microbes and some bacteria and micro-toxins in those buildings neurotoxins. That affects the central nervous system, which can lead even to symptoms related to MCS, like fatigue or pain. Moreover, the chronic mold from that building can impair the liver function.

And that makes it difficult for the body to excrete toxins. Indoor mold can also lead to epigenetic changes, so it may switch on and off different genes that are, for example, responsible for inflammatory processes, for detoxification.

The mold itself also disrupts the gut microbiome. We know that 70, 80 percent of our immune system is in the gut. So if the mold affects our gut, it actually directly affects also our immune system, again leading to over-activation of the immune system.

There are several studies done in Finland that actually show the direct connection between exposure to mold and MCS. So in one study, they showed that around 40 percent of people from that study group who were exposed to mold developed MCS compared to just 9 percent of controls who were not exposed.

And for those people who already have MCS, spending time in water damaged building may aggravate the symptoms like respiratory symptoms and skin irritation, cognitive dysfunction.

[00:09:05] Aaron Goodman: Dr. Wasik, since mold is hard to avoid, how do we know if we're living in place that's impacted by mold?

[00:09:16] Anita W.: First when you enter such a place and you are a person with sensitivities, you will realize quite quickly. It takes a few minutes to a few hours to realize that there is something wrong with the indoor air quality. Actually, you may start to have itchy eyes, itchy throat, a bit problem with breathing, or feeling a bit knocked down but if you are not allergic to mold, you don't need to be allergic to mold to actually feel this mold problem in the building you may actually look at the different smells around the building. The most typical smell is this kind of muddy smell, but this is not the only smell what mold can produce. It depends on the mold type, so the species, as well as the building materials. So sometimes mold can give this almond smell, it can give acidic smell, it can give a bit like a perfume smell.

So, when you start to smell something strange in the apartment, that should actually put you a question, should you have a look, is there any problem with the mold? And of course, the best is to test. In Finland, we have different tests to do, but some are good, some are not so precise. We have also dogs that are specially trained to distinguish between the mold, which is indoor and outdoor that came just because you open the window. This is what you could do at the first. And I think the most important thing is to actually take a specialist who really know how to do, and if there is a mold problem, it's important to never touch that mold yourself.

Because when you touch mold, it creates more and more mycotoxins and release a lot of spores because it wants to reproduce just in case. And that's extremely toxic for the person.

So the company who is dealing with mold remediation should come. You should leave the building during this time and when the house is remediated, you should retest again to make sure that it was done properly.

[00:11:43] Aaron Goodman: Just going back to earlier, you were mentioning your own experiences meeting with healthcare workers at the time of your illness and the way you were treated. Sounds a lot like dismissal and maybe misdiagnosis. On the whole, how are people in Scandinavia and Europe with MCS treated by physicians?

[00:12:09] Anita W.: So most people with MCS, in Finland or in other parts of Europe, are facing significant challenges when seeking validation and support from doctors, but also from society and even sometimes their own families.

MCS is dismissed and many doctors attribute symptoms to psychological or psychiatric rather than physiological causes. So people are left without affecting guidance on managing their condition. And it's the same in society. MCS often remains misunderstood due to the limited public education about that condition.

So even when in Finland, in almost every shop, you can buy fragrance free products like cleaning products or cosmetics. Many hotels also offer fragrance free rooms and workplaces start to acquire a bit of policy of fragrance free areas still the general public is not aware how the synthetic chemicals can trigger severe physiological reaction in people with MCS.

This lack of social also understanding comes from the information that the government, but also medical professions provide. So people assume that those with MCS are faking their symptoms or they are just acting difficult. Consequently, of course, the individuals with MCS face a judgment and skepticism instead of empathy, especially when they request some fragrance free environment or accommodation.

I'm the lucky one because my family quite quickly realized how serious MCS is, and they do everything to keep my stay at their place always as healthy as possible, but not everybody is so lucky.

[00:14:13] Aaron Goodman: I want to ask you about the psychogenic argument that some doctors and researchers continue to advance. What do you think motivates them? What troubles me is that oftentimes when I read their papers, they don't even talk to people with MCS.

[00:14:35] Anita W.: That's true. That's true.

[00:14:37] Aaron Goodman: What do you make of this argument and their science?

[00:14:41] Anita W.: For me, the just the claim that MCS is purely psychological overlooks a growing body of scientific evidence that MCS is a complex biological and multi system physiological disorder.

This theory, the psychological theory, also dismiss the few thousands of toxicological studies, how different chemicals compound affect negatively our health. Of course, there is a truth that stress and mental health influence the symptoms of any chronic conditions, but reducing MCS only to psychological issue, it dismisses the real biological explanation.

So why is that? The problem is that MCS is politicized. The epidemiological literature shows the consequences of chemicals to our body, the governments and the corporative institutes, denied that link.

The major institutes in Finland that deal with public health only citate this literature that works well for the agenda. So we are dealing here with selective bias and many decisions that are made by those officials and even by medical doctors, like giving proper diagnosis. It's done by specialists who are linked to corporations without often giving the disclosure of conflict of interest.

The chemical industry is one of the most powerful industry in this world so you imagine that if you have people who suddenly get diagnosis of MCS, diagnosis that is acknowledged and recognized, these people would be allowed to claim benefits and compensations. And that's a lot of money.

[00:16:54] Aaron Goodman: Beyond that, Dr. Wasik, is it that doctors who are trained, let's say in anxiety, when they look at MCS, it's their default to fall back on their training or their lenses to look at MCS through that psychological lens.

[00:17:12] Anita W.: Absolutely, because that's how they are trained. And I think the problem is that in medical school, there's lack of education in toxicology, microbiology, and even if there is, they are only taught to address the symptoms of the ongoing problems.

They even don't look at the root causes. Many of the medical schools are even sponsored by pharma companies, and that also affects what the medical students are learning, and that will not be toxicology for sure.

[00:17:53] Aaron Goodman: And all of this does it contribute to the stigma and the isolation that people with MCS face when we go to doctors?

[00:18:02] Anita W.: MCS is not a psychological problem, but it actually may lead to psychological problems like anxiety and depression. Because for many reasons, toxins itself can directly affect the neurotransmitters in the brain that will cause, for example, symptoms of anxiety and depression.

And the second is the social impact of being lonely, being left without the financial stability, being left without friends and supportive groups. So of course, who wouldn't get depressed and anxious in such a situation. But the problem is that the medical society claim that it's the anxiety and depression that causes MCS, but it's not other way around. Which doesn't make sense based off even scientific literature.

[00:19:01] Aaron Goodman: Do you have a sense, maybe an abbreviated version of what's going on in the body and mind but for people who have MCS?

[00:19:11] Anita W.: There's several biological theories behind MCS, for example, limbic system and central sensitization, neurogenic inflammation, oxidative stress, and so on I don't look it as only one territory, but rather combination of those territories because each of us is different. The root cause of MCS for everybody can be different. When we are exposed to toxic chemicals, synthetic chemicals, but also biotoxins, and we are a people who are genetically predisposed to sensitivities, our immuno system starts to be activated. So especially the muscles in our body that produce a lot of pro inflammatory molecules, cytokines, histamine.

And that raises the whole body chronic inflammation. That's the one situation in the body which is going on. The second is that those toxins directly damage mitochondria. Mitochondria are disorganized in every single cell in our body that produce energy. When they are damaged, we are starting to deal with oxidative stress.

That will deplete our glutathione level, so the strongest antioxidant in our body. That will slow down the detoxification enzymes that will increase the activations of different receptors in our body that all together will decrease the tolerance to chemicals. So this decreased tolerance to chemicals combined with constant chronic inflammation in our body will actually lead to barrier damage, which will cause hyperactivation of the autonomous nervous system.

And that gives consequences in all areas. Body system and that's why we have a symptoms from all body systems when we deal with MCS.

[00:21:17] Aaron Goodman: Do you think there could ever be a biological test for determining if someone has MCS?

[00:21:25] Anita W.: At the moment, as we know, there's no single test that exists to confirm and yes, and if there will be, it's hard to predict at the moment, there are several potential biomarkers that actually can be used to only have diagnosis, but it's they are unspecific because they are present also in many other health conditions.

For example, it's been shown that people with MCS have reduced level of glutathione, so our strongest antioxidant. They have reduced level of vitamin D, which all can be good for you measured. They have elevated high sensitive C reactive protein, elevated histamine level, elevated protein S 100B, which is the marker of the blood brain barrier dysfunction and actual injury of the nervous system.

There is also presence of several autoantibodies. But, it's hard to say if just one specific test will this diagnosis and actually rule out any other conditions.

[00:22:36] Aaron Goodman: Do you believe there's enough research being done globally about MCS?

[00:22:42] Anita W.: No. There's a lot of research about different chemical compounds and the impact of our health. However, to link this directly to MCS is lacking. And I think it's back to our previous topic about governmental institutes and where the money is put to. Every research project requires a lot of funding. And private foundations and governmental foundations are not eager to fund research on MCS.

I've been trying as a scientist to also get different grants for running the projects related to MCS, even to write a book about MCS. And besides getting quite positive feedback about the application itself, I never got it. And I heard from other people that, you know, getting grants is also quite political thing.

[00:23:42] Aaron Goodman: In your practice do you face isolation or any perhaps judgment by other medical professionals because you're focused on MCS?

[00:23:53] Anita W.: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. People don't take seriously this illness, they will never take me seriously until something will change globally about understanding of MCS. Whenever I speak with other medical professionals and mention that I focus on environmental illnesses, they always look quite strangely on me. And quite often they question if MCS exists, or is it just some kind of hypochondria?

[00:24:31] Aaron Goodman: And this goes back decades, does it not?

[00:24:34] Anita W.: Absolutely. MCS was acknowledged more than 70 years ago. And it's still, besides all the science what's been done and we are still dealing with neglect from government, from medical professions, from society. I've been quite criticized and I've been a scientist, you know, most of my life and still I face those kind of judgments.

[00:25:03] Aaron Goodman: Yeah. Does it motivate you?

[00:25:05] Anita W.: It does. It does. And I think the strongest motivation is actually the fact that I experience the same health conditions and I, of course, I still react to chemicals, but as I told you, not in the same way as at the beginning of my illness, but I feel that this is my passion to actually talk more about this illness, because when we look at the whole world in last 70 years, the production of synthetic chemicals increased by 400 times. It's predicted that by year 2050, it will increase this also six fold. So we are constantly exposed to chemicals and the same pattern of increasing the incidence of MCS align with the increasing amount of toxins in the environment. 

So in the last decades, the incidence of MCS increased globally by three folds, three folds in just 10 years. And in Finland, for example, 15 percent of population report sensitivity to chemicals. I think in U.S. it's around 20 percent, in Germany 9 percent. And it's quite scary to look what will happen in next 10 years, in next 20 years, because I can see that even in U.S. every fifth person reacts to chemicals. Because these numbers can drastically change, unfortunate towards the quite sad statistics in just a couple of years.

[00:26:59] Aaron Goodman: Yes. I imagine there's a lot you could talk about herbal medicine. For folks who are listening do you want to share some brief highlights about how it can help people with MCS?

[00:27:12] Anita W.: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So in herbal medicine, the goal is to find the root causes of ongoing disease. And as I told at the beginning, the root causes of MCS can be different in different people, but what is the approach, how you actually address MCS in natural medicine is the first priority is to reduce the exposure as much as possible. 

Of course, at home is easier to do, but you cannot reduce your exposure in environment. You just go out and you breathe this air, you drink that water, but at home you try to decrease the exposure as much as possible. 

Second, you have to look what you eat. Try to eat as organic as possible. No processed food. Cook to yourself everything from scratch. Drink also only filtered water. To support the sleep and nervous system, just because we know that the sleep is the key for our healing. It allows actually body to detoxify and heal. So I, with my clients, I use different herbs that have like really calming, relaxing properties. 

Second is to calm down the immunosystem, because it's just over overreacting. So there are different, again, herbs like Bacchus, Kurkup, Nettle, Quercetin, as the herbal compound that are known to calm down the muscles and calm down different, let's say, allergic reactions. Because the immunosystem is located in the gut mostly, around 70 to 80 percent. 

So the next step is to look what's going on in the gut. If there is any gut problem, like gut mucosal irritation, due to, for example, dysbiosis, that will generate not only local inflammation in the gut, but actually the systemic inflammation. So when the gut is stabilized, this is the moment you can start to detoxify the body. 

Detoxified using different herbs, different methods to support liver, to support kidneys different techniques like infrared sauna there's huge list of things, what you can do, but every of them has to be plan accordingly to individual's needs, because not everybody will actually even react well to those treatments. 

But also we need to look at different root causes. And when we let's say detox the body, and we address all of the steps which I just told you about. 

Then finally, we can address the specific root causes, even if it's some infection, if it's some some more toxicity. 

And after that, you start to really feel that the sensitivity to chemicals starts to decrease. 

For me, the key was to actually detox my body from the mold toxins. And so as I detox the body from the mold, I started to see around 50 percent decreased reactions to chemicals. So, there's still things to do because I'm still dealing with the Lyme disease, but I believe that when I will deal with all the hidden infection, then the reactions to chemicals will also start to slow down. 

But of course, at the end, we have to remember that even if we manage to calm down our reactions, it doesn't mean we have to go back to the life we had before. We need to live clean life breathe as clean air as possible. And that's easier to do at home because you can install different filters. 

We have to take care of our health. Actually, everybody should.

[00:31:20] Aaron Goodman: Thank you so much, Dr. Wasik.

[00:31:21] Anita W.: Thank you so much as well.

[00:31:24] Aaron Goodman: You've been listening to the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm the host and podcast creator, Aaron Goodman. 

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast is by and for the MCS community. The podcast is supported by the Marilyn Brockman Hoffman Foundation and listeners like you. 

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The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and its associated website are the work of Aaron Goodman and made possible with funds from the Marilyn Brockman Hoffman Foundation, supporting efforts to educate and inform physicians, scientists, and the public about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. The content, opinions, findings, statements, and more and recommendations expressed in this Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and associated website do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of its sponsors.