CHAPTER 10

Environmental Illness and Asthma

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
MAGNESIUM AND ENVIRONMENTAL ILLNESS

Symptoms of chemical sensitivity can be completely or partially produced by magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium helps detoxify toxic chemicals.

Magnesium helps eliminate heavy metals from the body.

Dr. Sherry Rogers is a diplomate in family practice, allergy-asthma-immunology, and environmental medicine and a fellow of the American College of Nutrition. In private practice for more than thirty years, she treats very ill people from all over the world who have environmental toxicity. One of her basic maxims is that “symptoms of chemical sensitivity can be wholly or in part produced by magnesium deficiency.” She has tested enough people over the decades to know this to be a fact and part of her success derives from implementing magnesium therapy on all her patients.

CFS and fibromyalgia are actually aspects of environmental illness. In Chapter 9 we saw how these conditions develop over time in a toxic environment. Now we will take a closer look at some environmentally sensitive people and the chemicals they encountered.

Natalie, sometimes in jest but more often in anger, would call what she experienced a “chemical warfare attack.” It happened when she stepped out onto her driveway and was enveloped by a cloud of chemical spray from a lawn care truck treating her neighbor’s yard. She could neither breathe nor speak. Her lungs were on fire, and her head felt as though it were exploding. She felt dizzy and shaky. She managed to stagger into the house, where she collapsed on the floor. Her husband found her a few minutes later and took her to the hospital, where they could do very little except give her oxygen and tell her to rest.

Natalie had been the picture of health, athletic, active, and happy. Now she was chronically fatigued. She became hypersensitive to every chemical she came in contact with. She couldn’t even read; magazines and newspapers reeked of ink. Perfume samples that came in magazines were a nightmare. She had to find natural substitutes for cleaning products and cosmetics. Plants with moldy-smelling dirt had to go. She became allergic to wool. Her husband had to do all the cooking because she was sensitive to the gas fumes from their stove. Her diet became increasingly limited, as she reacted to many foods. When she couldn’t even use the telephone because holding the plastic receiver gave her hives, she became a prisoner in her own home with no contact with the outside world.

Elizabeth, Ted, and their children developed an array of symptoms after they used urea formaldehyde insulation in their home renovation. As soon as it was installed, they noticed an odor. The contractor said not to worry, it would be gone in a few days. The only thing that was gone in a few days was the contractor. They phoned and phoned, but he never returned their calls. By the end of the week the whole family had what appeared to be a bad cold, their eyes and noses streaming. The children developed skin rashes, and they all were irritable, headachy, and tired. When the “cold” didn’t go away in ten days they went to the doctor, who saw their red, irritated skin and mucous membranes but no signs of infection, except for swollen neck glands. The doctor suggested they might be allergic to something. That clinched it; they knew it was the insulation. They didn’t know what they could do about it. They tried toughing it out to see if the chemical would dissipate, but when the heat came on the next month the problem actually got worse. They were beginning to be allergic to more and more things, and none of them felt well at all. Finally, they decided to rip out all the insulation, no matter what it cost.

Natalie, Elizabeth, Ted, and the children eventually got better. With much time, effort, and money and the help of sympathetic and knowledgeable health practitioners who understand the effects of the environment and the need to detoxify and nourish the body, they regained their health. The modalities they used were pure water, fresh air, organic foods, rotation diets, sauna therapy, vitamin and mineral supplements (especially 300 mg of elemental magnesium twice a day), homeopathy, acupuncture, and a positive attitude.

Some people with the above conditions are not as fortunate as Natalie, Elizabeth, and Ted, who at least knew what was harming them almost from the start. Those who gradually build up allergies and sensitivities to environmental toxins never know they’re getting sick until they’ve developed asthma, eczema, or even cancer. What follows is an overview of our chemical environment and how its impact on our health can be lessened by neuroprotectants like magnesium.

Toxic chemicals were found in nearly all foods tested by the FDA at a level causing a health concern. They included persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as DDT and dioxin, which have been banned in the United States for decades but are still produced in other countries. Exposure to minuscule levels of POPs at crucial times in fetal and infant development can disrupt or damage human hormone, reproductive, neurological, and immune systems. ¹

In 2000 the Centers for Disease Control released the very first large-scale national survey of environmental toxins from human samples, and the results are startling. Blood and urine levels of twenty-seven chemicals tested in five thousand Americans far exceeded safe levels. The EPA and CDC mostly rely on air, water, and soil samples to test for toxic levels of chemicals. Even then, only a few dozen of the more than one hundred thousand chemicals in everyday use are monitored for safety. ² Perhaps this human study will reinforce a cutback in chemical pesticide use as pledged by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1993. Chemical pesticide use, however, has increased from 900 million pounds in 1992 to 940 million pounds in 2000, while total cropland has decreased. And the riskiest chemical pesticides, such as organophosphates, carbamates, probable or possible carcinogens, still account for over 40 percent of the pesticides used in U.S. agriculture. ³

The average American household generates fifteen pounds of household hazardous waste each year, according to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. “Our homes contain an average of three to eight gallons of hazardous materials in kitchens, bathrooms, garages and basements,” the government agency reports. And what is the consequence of all these chemicals in our home environment? In a California study the number of people with sensitivities to one or more common chemicals is “surprisingly large,” according to researchers. Just over 6 percent of the subjects reported having a diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivity or environmental illness, and nearly 16 percent reported being allergic or unusually sensitive to everyday chemicals.⁴

In 1989, the World Health Organization took a strong stand regarding the origins of cancer when it stated that up to 80 percent of cancers are environmentally influenced. In 1985, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a survey of human fat composition. It found that more than 99 percent of the population had measurable levels of the nine chemicals they tested for, including PCBs and DDT. In 2000, 100 percent of fat samples tested were positive for chemicals. Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, is an internationally recognized authority on the toxic and carcinogenic effects of environmental pollutants in air, water, and the workplace. His research was key to banning DDT and other problematic ingredients and contaminants in consumer products—food, cosmetics, and household products. In his keynote address to a Health Canada–sponsored cancer conference, he reported that we all now carry more than five hundred different compounds in our cells, none of which existed before 1920, and that “there is no safe dose for any of them.”⁵ With this information, activists have been demanding more use of safe alternatives to chemicals. But government and industry are still not listening.

Chemicals can destroy or paralyze different enzymes that protect us from external toxins. Thus, being exposed to chemicals prevents the body from protecting us from those very chemicals. Magnesium is active in more than 325 enzyme systems in the body, and when its enzymes are paralyzed, it is unable to do its essential work of energy production, detoxification, and brain and nerve protection.

METALS AND MAGNESIUM

Dr. Deborah Baker has researched the health effects of mercury for over a decade.⁶ She acknowledges that mercury pervades our environment through industrial exposure, but the major source of elemental mercury in the general North American population is mercury vapor released from dental amalgams.^7,8,9,10 These amalgams are, on average, 50 percent mercury, and they off-gas or vaporize into your body’s cells every time you chew, brush your teeth, or eat anything hot or acidic. There is a significant positive correlation between the number of amalgams in the mouth and the mercury content of human tissues, including the brain.¹¹

Mercury drastically increases the excretion of magnesium and calcium from the kidneys, which may be caused by the kidney damage seen in mercury poisoning.¹² Such mineral loss impairs cell production, the storage and utilization of energy, and cellular repair and replication. Sufficient magnesium supplementation can not only undo some of this damage but can prevent certain types of heavy metal toxicity.^13,14

Long-term fetal exposure during pregnancy to even low concentrations of mercury can lead to irreversible developmental disorders.¹⁵ The concentration of magnesium in the placental and fetal tissues necessarily increases during pregnancy.¹⁶ Unfortunately, the demand for magnesium usually exceeds its supply, and thus anything that further lowers magnesium levels, such as mercury, puts the pregnancy and child at risk.

Dr. Baker says that approximately 85 percent of her patients, as part of their mercury detoxification protocol, supplement with 300 mg to 500 mg daily of magnesium glycinate, in divided doses. Patients frequently comment that their muscular pain improves while on magnesium.

Lead and cadmium have a cumulative toxicity on the kidney and heart in particular. Magnesium appears to be a competitive inhibitor of these two polluting metals at different sites, particularly during combined intoxication. ¹⁷ A Yugoslavian research team found that increased intake of magnesium eliminates lead via the urine and may do the same with certain other heavy metals. Under experimental conditions, they found that magnesium increased excretion of cadmium via the urine.¹⁸ Adequate magnesium levels can also help prevent the toxic effects of aluminum, which include breakdown of sugar stores and disruption in the production of ATP energy.¹⁹

TREATMENT

The hallmark of a mineral-deficient person is often one who takes vitamins without minerals and feels worse or does well for a while but then deteriorates. ²⁰ If you have a mineral deficiency, especially of magnesium, which is necessary for energy production, certain areas of the body may be overstimulated by vitamin supplements, while other areas can’t respond. Therefore, if you suffer severe environmental illness, it is important to have a health care practitioner monitor supplement intake and to begin with magnesium as one of your first supplements.

The treatment for environmental illness is individualized. Since allopathic medicine does not recognize environmental disease, it has not established treatment protocols. According to environmental experts, magnesium is essential to build up the body’s energy and fully utilize its detoxification systems. The source of environmental toxins, however, must be eliminated or avoided; otherwise it is like bailing out a sinking ship by hand. You first have to be aware of the chemicals in your environment, avoid them like the plague, and work diligently with the therapies that follow to clean out your body.

The lowly dry cleaning chemicals, the mercury in dental fillings, and the cleaning products under the sink all build up in our bodies and cause chronic disease. Air purifying machines, water filters, organic food, organic supplements, and natural alternatives to chemicals provide the foundation of environmental health treatment.

DIET

The key in treating environmental illness is to eat organic, free-range, unprocessed, unadulterated foods. The pesticides added to the soil and the antibiotics used on poultry and beef sicken the animals and the people who eat them. The rash of diseases in cattle is likely related to the low quality of their feed, the tons of drugs they are given to fatten them up, and the gallons of chemicals sprayed on them to treat parasites. Unfortunately, even organic farms are subjected to acid rain, contaminated groundwater, and polluted air, which means that all of us should take an active role in detoxifying our bodies of suspected chemicals.

Drink six to eight glasses of pure water a day. Chemicals in our environment that are water-soluble are eliminated through the kidneys and colon, especially if you drink enough pure water. Use a filter that has a pore size of less than 0.5 microns and guarantees the elimination of chemicals as well as parasites.

To eliminate fat-soluble chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides, which can become even more toxic when they are broken down by the liver, you need dry saunas and sea clay wraps. Fasting is not recommended to eliminate toxins. Fat-soluble chemicals are stored in fat cells, which keeps them out of circulation. When you try to fast or diet, your fat stores are broken down for energy, and out come the chemicals. The headache, nausea, light-headedness, and irritability are not just from lack of food but from poisons flooding your bloodstream. While fasting, I’ve tasted and felt the numbing effect of dental anesthetics from decades before. If you are already feeling ill, fasting and dieting are going to be very unpleasant experiences.

DRY SAUNA

Numerous cultures use sweat lodges, steam baths, or saunas for cleansing and purification. Many health clubs and big apartment buildings have saunas and steam baths, and more and more people are building saunas in their own homes. Low-to-moderate-temperature saunas are one of the most important ways to detoxify from pesticide exposure. Head-to-toe perspiration through the skin, the largest organ of elimination, releases stored toxins and opens the pores. Fat that is close to the skin is heated, mobilized, and broken down, releasing toxins and breaking up cellulite. The heat increases metabolism, burns off calories, and gives the heart and circulation a workout. This is a boon if you don’t have the energy to exercise. It is well known in medicine that a fever is the body’s way of burning off an infection and stimulating the immune system. Fever therapy and sauna therapy are employed at alternative medicine healing centers to do just that. The controlled temperature in a sauna is excellent for relaxing muscular aches and pains and relieving sinus congestion. The only way I made it through my medical internship was by having regular saunas to reduce the daily stress.

SEA CLAY WRAPS

A very appealing method of detoxification is the Universal Contour Wrap. In Europe it is promoted as a healing and cleansing modality; however, in America it can be marketed only as a beauty treatment. It is an extremely safe and effective method of detoxification. A licensed technician uses large tensor bandages soaked in liquid clay to wrap your whole body from toe to neck. The process draws out poisons, toxins, and edema. Measurements before and after the hourlong treatment show actual loss of inches. The health and appearance of the skin is much improved. It even works to eliminate cellulite. You can obtain a kit to do your own partial wraps. See the Resources section for more information.

SUPPLEMENTS

If you have environmental illness, you feel as though you are sensitive or allergic to everything. When it comes to taking supplements, you may be unable to tolerate anything, but you might be deficient in everything. This does not necessarily mean that you are allergic to a particular supplement; rather, when you take it, your body responds by increasing some metabolic processes, which results in the body throwing off waste products that make you feel nauseous or headachy. That is why an organic diet, saunas, sea clay wraps, and exercise should be implemented before taking supplements.

The first supplement to add is magnesium. Start with 100 mg of elemental magnesium once a day and add a second capsule after a week, a third in the third week, and a fourth a week later, in divided doses. Cut back if you have loose stools. “Green drinks” are the next food supplement to add. They are made from a variety of organic land and sea vegetables and flavored with stevia. Some “green drinks” are made with whey protein powder and make a good cleansing drink or meal replacement for a modified fast.

By now you should be feeling much better and able to add some more supplements to help boost your immune system and provide necessary building blocks for health. Environmental illness does not require high-dose supplementation like other diseases. In fact, since most megavitamins and minerals are derived synthetically, it is a far better approach to use low-potency food-based supplements from organic sources. Standard Process supplements, for example, meet these criteria and are available from natural health practitioners, who can assist you in developing an individualized program.

MAGNESIUM AND ASTHMA

As a child, Gerry had eczema. Every possible skin cream and lotion was tried, to no avail, but finally, after many years, the last patch disappeared on its own. It was followed almost immediately, however, by his first asthma attack. By age thirty, he was suffering attacks of wheezing and coughing when he exercised and when he was around cats, dogs,

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT MAGNESIUM AND ASTHMA

Research shows that many patients with asthma and other bronchial diseases have low magnesium.

Many drugs used in the treatment of asthma cause a loss of magnesium, making symptoms only worse.

Patients treated with simple magnesium supplementation report marked improvement in their symptoms.

horses, dust, flowers, and chemical smells. Various medications helped initially, but after a year or two they would stop working. He wasn’t satisfied with them, anyway; one gave him heart palpitations, and another contained cortisone, which made him gain weight and retain fluid. Then one day a vitamin newsletter came in the mail. He almost threw it out, but a headline caught his attention: “Magnesium Halts Asthma Spasms.”

Asthma is characterized by bronchial spasm, swelling of the mucous membranes of the lung, excessive mucus production, and an inability to fully empty the lungs of air. Asthma finds its easiest victims in children under ten and is twice as common in boys and men, although it affects about 3 percent of the general population. Tabulating all the triggers of an asthma attack is a daunting task; there seems to be a variety of stimuli, including lung infection, exercise, emotional upset, food sensitivities, inhalation of cold air or irritating aromatic substances (smoke, gas fumes, paint fumes, chemical fumes), and reactions to specific allergens, such as pollens.

Bronchial spasms occur in both extrinsic asthma (an allergic reaction to external substances such as mold, dust, animal hair, pollens and chemicals) and intrinsic asthma (from exercise, infection, and emotional upset). The allergic triggers, called allergens, initiate the release of histamines in your body, which try to eliminate the allergens by stimulating lots of mucus to mop up the allergens and push them out through sneezing, coughing, and watery eyes. One of the side effects of too much histamine is tightening of the bronchial tubes, which go into spasm. Such spasms can initiate episodic wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, which quickly lead to rapid breathing, difficulty exhaling, anxiety, and dehydration. The anxiety of an asthma attack can create a gripping fear that tenses up the whole body and is hard to shake off.

Gerry really identified with what he read about asthma and magnesium, and he realized that his whole body was tense. He decided to try some magnesium supplements under his doctor’s supervision, and with them he was able to greatly decrease his medications.

Magnesium is an excellent treatment for asthma because it is a natural antihistamine and a bronchodilator. It has a calming effect on the muscles of the bronchial tubes and the whole body. Certainly, drug therapy for asthma can often be lifesaving; drugs, however, are not curative. You have to eliminate the underlying cause of asthma and replace magnesium to fully treat this condition. Without magnesium, asthma can become chronic, especially if the various triggers are not eliminated; even the fear of an attack can magnify the emotional component. Conventional allergy shots have been used for decades to try to trick the body into accepting irritating allergens but often do not work, especially when the condition is due to a nutrient deficiency.

According to Dr. Seelig, the drug treatment of asthma consists of magnesium-wasters such as beta blockers, cortisone, and ventolin. The side effects of these drugs include severe magnesium deficiency that can result in arrhythmia and sudden death.²¹ Theophylline (Aminophylline) results in loss of magnesium and suppression of vitamin B₆ activity, which is necessary for magnesium function. Prednisone wastes magnesium, causes sodium retention and fluid retention, suppresses vitamin D, and causes increased urinary excretion of zinc, vitamin K, and vitamin C.²²

Childhood asthma can be life-threatening; but safe methods of treating this condition can be added. In a European study, a group of children who had deteriorated in spite of conventional drug therapy were given magnesium sulfate intravenously. Comparing the magnesium group with the placebo group, the magnesium group had lower clinical asthma scores and a significantly greater percentage of improvement in lung function over a ninety-minute period. No significant side effects were observed.²³

Dr. Lydia Ciarallo in the Department of Pediatrics, Brown University School of Medicine, treated thirty-one asthma patients ages six to eighteen who were deteriorating on conventional treatments. One group was given magnesium sulfate and another group was given saline solution, both intravenously. At fifty minutes the magnesium group had a significantly greater percentage of improvement in lung function, and more magnesium patients were discharged from the emergency department than the placebo group who went on to hospitalization. ²⁴

Another study showed a correlation between intracellular magnesium levels and airway spasm. The investigators found that patients who had low cellular magnesium levels had increased bronchial spasm. This finding confirmed not only that magnesium was useful in the treatment of asthma by dilating the bronchial tubes but that lack of magnesium was probably a cause of this condition.²⁵

A team of researchers identified magnesium deficiency as surprisingly common, finding it in 65 percent of an intensive-care population of asthmatics and in 11 percent of an outpatient asthma population. They supported the use of magnesium to help prevent asthma attacks. Magnesium has several antiasthmatic actions. As a calcium antagonist, it relaxes airways and smooth muscles and dilates the lungs. It also reduces airway inflammation, inhibits chemicals that cause spasm, and increases anti-inflammatory substances such as nitric oxide.²⁶

The same study established that a lower dietary magnesium intake was associated with impaired lung function, bronchial hyperreactivity, and an increased risk of wheezing. The study included 2,633 randomly selected adults ages eighteen to seventy. Dietary magnesium intake was calculated by a food frequency questionnaire, and lung function and allergic tendency were evaluated. The investigators concluded that low magnesium intake may be involved in the development of both asthma and chronic obstructive airway disease.

DIET

Avoid sugar. Limit red meat and dairy, which contain substances that increase inflammation in the body. Increase yellow vegetables and green leafy vegetables, which contain substances that inhibit inflammation. Increase intake of fish oils, seed and nut oils, cold-water fish (herring, sardines, salmon), flaxseed oil, and walnuts to reduce inflammation. Eat grapes; grape skins contain quercetin, which prevents histamine release and inhibits inflammatory products.

Try a liquid fast: Use a therapeutic whey protein powder, a green drink, and/or fresh, organic juices plus fiber for three days, followed by a vegetarian diet for four days.

Get out of the rut of eating the same foods every day and eliminate possible food allergies. Eggs, shellfish, and peanuts usually cause immediate sensitivity reactions; milk, chocolate, wheat, citrus, and food colorings cause delayed food reactions. Carefully check labels in the grocery store and speak up in restaurants to avoid even small amounts of potential allergic triggers.

Avoid aspirin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (e.g., ibuprofen), which can cause allergic reactions.

Clean out environmental allergies: Find other homes for cats and dogs. Avoid wall-to-wall carpeting, wall hangings, and feather pillows. Frequently replace or clean air filters for heating and cooling systems. Obtain environmentally sound cleaning products. Use a vacuum cleaner specific for allergies. Research HEPA air cleaners and ozone generators.

SUPPLEMENTS

Magnesium: 300 mg twice a day
Vitamin B₆: 50 mg twice a day
Pantothenic acid: 500 mg daily
Vitamin C: 1–2 g daily
Vitamin E as mixed tocopherols: 400 IU daily
Quercetin: 500 mg three times a day
Selenium: 250 mcg a day
Flaxseed oil: 1–2 tbsp daily
Hydrochloric acid: 5 grains, 1 tablet per day at the end of
a meal, increasing to one with each meal.