What is environmental medicine? There is growing evidence that environmental factors, especially food allergies and intolerances, can cause aching and painful muscles in the back and elsewhere in the body. Clinical ecology or environmental medicine includes a variety of techniques to test for allergies and to analyze environmental influences on individual health.
What is Environmental Medicine
The idea that an individual’s everyday environment can affect his or her health is a fundamental concept in modern complementary medicine. Clinical ecologists believe that a large number of people are allergic to everyday foods such as milk and wheat products.
However, the modern world also contains many other challenges to people’s health. Most of our food is sprayed with pesticides, more and more people are eating so called junk food and meals full of preservatives, and air quality is decreasing as traffic volumes increase.
Some experts in environmental medicine now estimate that anything up to one third of the population of the world’s developed nations suffer from some form of environmentally induces ill health, including headaches, aches and pains, asthma and skin problems such as eczema.
If you live in a big town there may be little you can do to avoid some of these hazards, but it is worth cutting down on foods that contain high amounts of chemical preservatives, just in case your back pain is part of an allergic reaction.
Environmental Medicine – Allergy Testing
The simplest way to test for food allergies is the elimination or exclusion diet. This involves cutting our substances from your diet for one or two weeks and then reintroducing them one at a time to see if they cause an adverse reaction. Seek advice from a qualified nutritionist or dietician to make sure you are still eating balanced meals and getting all the nutrients you need.
Applied kinesiology is an allergy testing technique based on the theory that substances to which a person is sensitive cause muscles weakening by interfering with the body’s electrical field. Suspect substances are placed under the person’s tongue or in the hand and practitioners check for tell tale weakness.
Another test that involves the body’s electrical fields is known as auricular cardiac reflex. Practitioners check for changes in a person’s pulse when foods suspected of causing an allergic reaction are placed within the electrical field.
In intradermal testing, suspect substances are diluted and a little of the liquid is injected under the skin to see if it causes an allergic reaction. Dairy products are among the most common causes of food allergies, affecting about one person in five. Intolerance to gluten, a protein found in wheat products, has been implicated in many health problems, including chronic fatigue and pain.
So, it is really important to understand the importance of Environmental Medicine in your life.
