On first glance the question, “What is MCS?” may seem like a fairly easy question to answer. Unfortunately the practical reality of answering this question can actually be rather challenging. When describing most health difficulties there is the benefit of being able to easily say that issue A is being caused by problem B. If we have the flu we can straightforwardly say a certain set of symptoms such as having a runny nose, body aches, fever, and various unpleasant challenges with our digestive system are all caused by the latest mutation of the flu virus. If we have diabetes we could say, “Diabetes is a lifelong (chronic) disease in which there are high levels of sugar in the blood. … High blood sugar levels can cause several symptoms, including: Blurry vision; Excess thirst; Fatigue; Frequent urination; etc…(from the National Institute of Health website)” The flu and diabetes are both well known ailments that have a soundly understood and rather strait forward connection between cause and effect. MCS is a little different.

One challenge we face when trying to answer the question of, “What is MCS?” is that MCS is not yet an officially recognized disease. Your local doctor can’t just go to an AMA approved list of disease symptoms or just do a blood test to diagnose someone as having MCS. MCS officially does not exist. One reason MCS is not an officially recognized disease is that, as of yet, no one really knows what the physiological processes are that cause MCS. No team of researchers has discovered what causes a MCS reaction once an offending chemical has entered the body nor has anyone found the mechanism causing us to have a lowered resistance to the offending chemicals. On top of this there is no definitive list of chemicals that cause those of us with MCS react and there is no readily identifiable list of universal symptoms that are brought about once we have been exposed to an MCS trigger. Scientists love straight forward cause and effect situations; being able to point out that a specific incident triggers a certain response and that the response shows up as a definite set of observable events is really what medical science is all about. MCS has not yet yielded such a set of easily understood answers. 

All of this does make the question “What is MCS?” a little challenging, but there are some definite things we can say. First and foremost MCS is a lowered resistance to environmental toxicity. It is not a fear of smells. It is not in a person’s imagination. MCS is REAL and is the daily experience of potentially millions of people worldwide. Where a healthy person would have health challenges at a sufficiently high exposure to various potentially hazardous chemicals; those of us with MCS will also have a reaction but will have that reaction at a MUCH lower level of exposure then the average person. 

How does this work? One of the best analogies I’ve heard is to compare MCS to a rain barrel. Every person on earth has a certain amount of toxicity they can handle, and that toxicity goes into the analogized rain barrel. Let’s say that an average normal person has a 50 gallon rain barrel. This person can handle a fair amount of added toxicity; they can wash their cloths with a perfumed detergent, use fabric softener and dryer sheets all used to wash laundry consisting of artificial fabrics colored with potentially toxic dyes. With clothing alone they have added 15 gallons of toxicity to their barrel. Let’s say that they also drive a car with an air freshener, have fuzzy rayon seat covers, and all of this after they put Armor All on their dash board; add another 10 gallons to the barrel. Imagine this person continues throughout their day and keeps adding 5 gallons here and maybe 10 there. Eventually they might fill up the barrel. What happens when they do? The water in the barrel spills over, assuming that they have not yet killed off the grass around the barrel, water will simply pour out onto that part lawn surrounding the barrel. It might be a little extra damp but no real harm done. 

Most people never get to this overflow happening, because rain barrels have a drain on them, a drain that will draw off the water into a safe place like a rock bed snuggly buried under the lawn. So for a normal person they have a big reserve and a well flowing drain, they may never completely fill their barrel. But if they do, and it’s not too big of a toxic hit, they might deal with it by just taking a nap while waiting for the drain to lower the water level and the lawn to dry. Before they know it they are as good as new.

So what about someone with MCS? We too have a rain barrel. That barrel does drain. Just like a normal person the barrel will have a certain capacity. But we may have some challenges somewhere in that process, and when these challenges do occur the water spills out on the ground. And when it does spill all too often the grass on the lawn around our barrel has seen too much water over the years and all that is left is dirt. Dirt that when it gets wet creates a muddy mess, a mess we will experience as a MCS reaction. 

But what about the barrel itself? Maybe our barrel has some cracks half way up the side that begin to leak after a certain point, there may be a big rock in the barrel displacing the amount of water it can hold, maybe the drain has some gunk in it plugging it up thus reducing the flow of water out of the barrel, maybe our barrel shrank diminishing its capacity, or perhaps our barrel may be broken all together so that almost any amount of water will flow out. A portion of of us can handle a certain amount of toxicity, some of us once we get a hit can’t easily drain it back out of our systems, others have different levels of reactions with different amounts of exposure, and some of us once any toxicity has entered our systems problems begin almost immediately. In the end each one of our rain barrels will look and function a little differently.

So maybe the question isn’t, “What is MCS?” but rather what is MCS to each of us as individuals? 

Each of us has a different amount of toxic resistance: our rain barrels all have different sizes and states of repair. Each of us have different reactions once we have been exposed to our chemical set: the area around our barrel may have grass, flowers, rocks or just dirt left after years of repeated overflow. 

So what does your barrel look like? Is it large or small? Does it have rocks or other debris in it reducing its capacity? What state of repair is it in? Where does it leak? How well does the drain work? And what does the terrain around the barrel look like? Once you have this picture firmly in mind then you have a good analogy to what MCS is for you. So, next time someone asks you what MCS is you might find it useful to tell them about your own personal rain barrel and let them know what MCS is for you.

~ Zen Master Sam

P.S. 
If you are someone who at times enjoys a more clinical version of an answer you may enjoy the following:

Six consensus criteria were identified by researchers for the diagnosis and definition of MCS in 1989 (later edited in 1999)

1.Symptoms are reproducible with repeated (chemical) exposures.

2.The condition has persisted for a significant period of time.

3.Low levels of exposure (lower than previously or commonly tolerated) result in manifestations of the syndrome (i.e. increased sensitivity).

4.The symptoms improve or resolve completely when the triggering chemicals are removed.

5.Responses often occur to multiple chemically unrelated substances.

6.Symptoms involve multiple-organ symptoms (runny nose, itchy eyes, headache, scratchy throat, ear ache, scalp pain, mental confusion or sleepiness, palpitations of the heart, upset stomach, nausea and/or diarrhea, abdominal cramping, aching joints).