I was recently introduced to the Isagenix line of nutritional supplements, and they promote a cleansing product. I went to an event, listened to their spiel and thought their online video about environmental contaminants and detoxification was quite interesting and logical.Check out the video here. While I was chatting with a client about the product she lent me a book, written by a friends husband (John Molot MD). It is called 12,000 Canaries Can't Be Wrong, and is by a doctor from Ontario who noticed many of his clients had similar unexplainable symptoms, which were often determined to be caused from sensitivity to environmental pollutants/contaminants. He started to specialize in this area of practice due to the alarming number of cases he was seeing on a regular basis. I've been making notes on interesting tidbits of information, so read on and lean. This was a scary and awakening read for me, and I'm not yet through the book.

• Once you are diagnosed with a chronic illness you are likely to get another
• Environmental Medicine: the treatment, recognition, and prevention of illness induced by exposure to biological and chemical agents encountered in food and water
• The core medical treatment is to improve the environment and the sick individuals relationship to the environment
• 80% of Dr. Molots patients were women aged 30-65 with no biological markers to aid in diagnosis. They had multiple symptoms in multiple systems
• Many patients felt significantly better after trying elimination diets
• Symptoms include: physical/mental fatigue, chronic pain, respiratory issues, GI issues, rash, allergies, and food/chemical sensitivity (ie perfume, make-up, cleaning product)
• Sick Building Syndrome: a medical term for a poorly ventilated building which may have mold or poor air exchange, or gases in the building. It causes acute health problems for those spending time in the building including fatigue, nausea, dizziness, and dry mucous membranes. People suffering from Sick Building Syndrome feel better when they are allowed to work from home or a different location.
• Psycho-neuroimmunology: the study of communication between the brain and the nervous system. Higher amounts of pollution in cities are directly related to higher amounts of Parkinsons/Alzheimers, chrronic allergies, endometriosis and lupus
• There are higher amounts of deaths and hospital admissions on days with poor air quality
• Since the Second World War more than 80,000 new synthetic chemicals have been manufactured and released into the environment
• More than 1 500 new chemicals are released each year and there is not adequate long term testing on the health of humans or health of developing fetus'
• 7.1 trillion pounds of chemicals are imported each year to the USA
• POP stands for Persistant Organic Chemicals which bioaccumulate and can be absorbed into living organisms and accumulate in fat cells. They can be transported across the world through the air or water.