Multiple Chemical Sensitiviy MCS is a MCAS and can be treated

Feedback from a patient finally opened up this mystery of “chemical hypersensitivity” for me. Those affected are terribly poor and don’t really get help anywhere, which is why it’s important to share this information here!

Franziska was unable to work for a long time due to MCS

When she came to us about 8 years ago, she couldn’t stay in the waiting room, we had to keep all the doors and windows open. With slight odor stimuli she developed acute attacks of suffocation (laryngeal spasm) and sometimes. weeks of deterioration with bed rest.

When I experienced this myself for the first time, I thought it was hysteria, the symptoms were so unusual. I learned about “myoclonus” as a symptom of the disease (= strong muscle twitches and also spasms) and “laryngeal stridor” but never experienced it before.

MCS was researched in Pubmed at the time

This is an inflammatory reaction in the limbic system starting from the olfactory bulb

I then sat down in front of Pubmed and looked at all of the 400 microscopic studies available at the time on “multiple chemical sensitivity” (today I have I found 13,000 studies on this, so it is being researched).

The vast majority of studies at the time were just like ME/CFS: “Patients are just imagining it,” but some studies clearly showed that this is a neurological disease and not a psychological disorder (Review e.g. 2024).

I finally read the studies

MCS is an inflammatory reaction in the limbic system that lasts for several weeks, which spreads from an “overstimulation of the bulb” to the midbrain – where the limbic system is located – and triggers changes there that last for weeks.

Back then, it all didn’t make as much sense to me as it does now, when we’re dealing intensively with neurological cases.

The multiple long-term effects of Covid or the mRNA vaccination as well as the ME/CFS cases give us all a lot of insight into these processes. Of course, we learn the most from Petros Kattou in Cyprus and the option of treating these brain regions directly with taVNS and tDCS.

We have been treating Franziska for about 7 years now

A homeopathic remedy helped a lot at first. With proper high potencies there was often peace for months.

big progress was amalgam removal; I made a YouTube video with it at the time (without going into the MCS since she was already feeling relatively well) in which she describes that immediately after removing a large amalgam seal she saw significantly better and had to take away her glasses. Appropriate heavy metal detoxification really did her good.

in this video she tells us how much improved her vision is right after leaving dentist’s office

With LDN we took another big step forward; LDN is also one of the most important remedies for ME/CFS – also for other autoimmune diseases and cancers.

When we learned about mast cell activation syndrome and its treatment (about 3 years ago) she was doing really well.

Franziska has finally started working again.

Relapse after vaccination and Covid

Unfortunately, Franziska suffered a relapse after the mRNA vaccinations, but we were able to get it under control quite well. When she had COVID last fall, the remaining symptom was:

• • violent myoclonus – also with VISUAL and ACOUSTIC stimuli
  • Laryngospasm (spasm of the larynx likein whooping cough or pseudocroup) through visual or acoustic stimuli
  • Smells cause brain fog and memory problems

again

In the neurologist’s waiting room, she produced strong myoclonus attacks – triggered by noise – so that her head was torn back and forth as if she had severe Parkinson’s disease. The neurologist was sure that these were clear epi-seizures, there is no doubt about it – and wrote an EEG and was amazed

from neurologists letter above: we found wild myoclonus but saw nothing in EEG

Relapse

She was with us today and during the testing of various substances (including homeopathics) she was able to tell straight away whether something was good or bad for her due to the laryngospasm.

In our test we see immediate calming of the entire situation with the wide-spectrum antiviral drug IVERMECTIN –> i.e. she still has an active corona virus in her brain and, in our experience, she will get better quickly.

It may also be that her extremely high EBV is active in the brain (which triggers almost all neurological diseases as well as herpes viruses), but valacyclovir or tenofovir triggered immediate laryngospasms, as did the homeopathic spasm remedies such as Cuprum, Ignatia, Spongia …. – and Murdannia (from Vitalsee) has never helped us with the EBV – unfortunately, dear PeterÖ!

She couldn’t take the black cumin oil as an antiviral that I suggested over the phone because of the strong smell.

thanks to Petros – brainstem stimulator will solve that

From Petros I have now seen enough cases of myoclonus that have resolved within a few weeks with the brainstem stimulator DUCEST. From a therapeutic point of view, this will be a “mown meadow” as we say in Austria.

the whole process is typical of MCAS

Excessive reactions of the most violent nature to minimal stimuli – this is prototypical for mast cell activation syndrome, we have learned in the last 3-5 years.

We now have functioning therapies that make life worth living again, thank God!

the new studies confirm this.

400 studies show multiple chemical sensitivity and MCAS linked

Search term for MCS and MCAS  = 400 studies

Search term for “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity” and MCAS = 40 studies

an external article on the topic

Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and multiple chemical sensitivities – a unified hypothesis

Carolyn McMakin, Published in Townsed Letter – copied from hers Websiteand translated by Google

Frequency-specific microcurrent as help

If the patients iWhen you arrive at your office, they all look the same with minor differences, more like identical suburban homes with different floor plans and exterior colors.

You have body pain that varies between 4-5/10 and 6-8/10. They do not sleep. They report feeling tired and depressed and say that walking through the soap aisle at the supermarket or standing next to someone wearing perfume gives them a headache or makes them sick for days. They seem to react to so many foods and are allergic to everything. Medication can ease the pain a little and cause side effects such as fatigue and slow thinking, but that’s all your doctor can do.

It doesn’t matter how many doctors of any type they have seen, they get one or more of these diagnoses: fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivities, and lately they are often told that they have mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) or small bowel syndrome bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), gastroparesis, leaky gut, mold toxins, Epstein-Barr (EBV), or perhaps Lyme disease (although the Lyme tests were negative or only showed one band). Or they are told that they are actually just suffering from depression, even though they are already taking an antidepressant, and are prescribed an additional antidepressant or a stronger dose of the antidepressant they are already taking. Or, even worse, they are given a “mood stabilizer” that turns out to be an “atypical antipsychotic” with serious long-term side effects that we cannot address in this article.

Generally, no one asks them, “What happened right before the outbreak?” If the answer is “Nothing happened, it just started,” the doctor usually moves on to the next questions instead of going into more detail. If the patient is lucky, the next question might be, “When was the last time you were well?” And the answer is often, “I’ve always been sick.” I think I’ve been like that since I was a child.” The next The question should be, but is not usually: “What did you do for fun in elementary school or high school?” The answer is often: “I played soccer, went horseback riding, or did gymnastics or theater.” The doctor answers: ” So you were fine until this year. Then what? When exactly did the symptoms get so bad?” After that, the answers might be relevant. But few doctors ask the following questions.

My entire practice since 1998 has consisted of 10% of patients who no one else could help, and I have failed some of them myself. But ultimately, through trial and error, through illness and recovery with the help of brilliant colleagues, I learned what I’m going to tell you in this article.

Generally, either the simplest medical blood tests are ordered, which come back normal, or exotic, complex blood tests costing up to $3,000 to $4,000 can be ordered, which show all sorts of things out of range. However, the exotic blood tests never say how the analysis is performed, where and in whom the normal values were determined or published, and give very little advice about what to do to correct the abnormal results. Patients leave with either a prescription for something that might not help much, or with $500 to $1,000 worth of supplements that they take three to four times a day that might help in a few months after an extremely restrictive diet .

When they look on the internet, they’ll feel even more anxious and hopeless, but at least they’ll feel like there are plenty of other people who have what they have, so now they know they’re not crazy. And then they come to you for one last chance so maybe you can help.

If you’re like most practitioners, you swallow the rising panic and desperation and apply the latest thing you’ve read or the technique you’ve learned that helps most patients and hope it helps this patient .

If you are the patient, you hope that this person is the one who has a solution to the problem that has been making your life difficult for the last two, five, ten, or 20 years. You hope that what little glimmer of hope you have will turn your despair into a solution that will make the trip and the doctor’s visit worth it as you tell the story to the tenth doctor for the tenth time.

And the truth underlying this unified theory is that these diseases and symptoms are onehave one thing in common that no one thinks about because there is no way to address that one thing. I suspect that they all have the vagus nerve in common, as it suppresses the immune system, regulates intestinal motility and intestinal pH and therefore intestinal flora, and connects the vagus to the brain and limbic system. Once you have a way to treat the vagus fairly quickly and you can see the results and improvements fairly quickly, the connections become obvious and patients improve.

It should be said upfront that I am evolving

d Frequency Specific Microcurrent™ (FSM) in 1996, and FSM is what I’m adding to treat all of these patients as a supplement to what most doctors are already doing. It must be said that I do not know how I would treat these conditions without FSM, so this article can only give you the unified theory based on treatment experience; It won’t teach you how to use FSM, but it might give you a reason to look into it. We hope the theory is interesting whether FSM appeals to you or not.

Fibromyalgia (FMS) is a neuroendocrine disorder characterized by chronic whole-body pain in all four quadrants, chronic unrefreshing sleep, and central pain sensitization for more than three months. Fibromyalgia patients have reduced growth hormone levels due to reduced growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) in the brain and loss of stage 4 sleep, where 85% of growth hormone is produced. In an adult, growth hormone facilitates the transport of amino acids into muscle cells for repair. Fibromyalgia patients do not tolerate exercise because they lack sufficient growth hormone and cannot repair the normal wear and tear that occurs with even minor exercise. They have reduced levels of branched-chain amino acids and consistent hormonal and neurotransmitter abnormalities occur in all fibromyalgia patients, regardless of what caused the fibromyalgia.1-7

After treating over 500 fibromyalgia patients over 23 years, it has become clear that there are at least five distinct and distinct causes of fibromyalgia. The literature states that 27% of cases are due to physical trauma. Clinical experience shows that this number is closer to 40%. The other causes are organic chemicals, severe prolonged stress, viral diseases and there is a genetic type characterized by genetic defects in the serotonin pathways that affect pain processing or by genetic defects in other neuroendocrine pathways. Fibromyalgia can have one or more of these causes. Regardless of how they start, fibromyalgia patients end up looking like the patient described in the first section of this article.8-13

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is different from fibromyalgia, although both diagnoses are sometimes used as garbage can diagnoses by many doctors who treat these patients. Chronic fatigue is associated with a positive Epstein-Barr titer and tender lymph nodes, suggesting an infectious influence. Some researchers question whether EBV causes CFS or is opportunistic. There is some support for the idea that CFS is an advanced form or variant of fibromyalgia, but this is not widely accepted. In CFS, fatigue and cognitive problems are the predominant complaints, along with non-exudative pharyngitis, swollen cervical lymph nodes, and low-grade fever. In one study, substance P was not elevated in the spinal fluid of CFS patients, while it is generally elevated in fibromyalgia patients [14-17].

Multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) are a controversial diagnosis unless you are the patient suffering from it. The medical community is still trying to decide whether it is a clinical diagnosis or not. Many in the medical community view MCS symptoms as a physical manifestation of a psychiatric illness rather than a primary medical condition. This attitude toward fibromyalgia prevailed for many years until there was finally enough research to demonstrate consistent physiological abnormalities in fibromyalgia patients. There are voices in the medical community and patient groups that believe that multiple chemical hypersensitivity represents a negative physical reaction to certain chemicals. Which patients which symptome may depend on individual genetic variants in individual liver detoxification pathways as well as neurochemical and metabolic pathways. There is still debate about whether multiple chemical hypersensitivity can be a diagnostic disease in its own right.

The most common symptoms of multiple chemical sensitivity can include headaches, skin rashes, asthma, muscle and joint pain, body aches, fatigue, memory loss and confusion, which are exacerbated by exposure to certain organic chemicals, fragrances or volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) that off-gas are from carpets, synthetic fibers or paints. Each patient presents with symptoms differently, which is why the medical community may find it difficult to decide that this is a single diagnosis.18

A unifying hypothesis for these three conditions is not intended to suggest that they are the same thing; This hypothesis suggests that the vagus nerve plays a role in causing and maintaining symptoms in these disorders.

The vagus nerve begins in the medulla, part of the brainstem, and has dense connections upward to the limbic system, the stress centers in the brain consisting of the amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and cingulate gyrus. As it leaves the skull and descends through the neck into the trunk, it becomes the longest and most complex nerve in the body.19,20

The vagal motor fiber

They start in the cell nucleus and control every muscle that controls speech and swallowing, and even some facial muscles. The recurrent laryngeal nerve opens the vocal cords so you can breathe, and another branch closes the vocal cords so you can produce sounds. The vagus nerve is the reason you can speak. The superior laryngeal branch of the vagus is why you can scream or sing high pitched sounds. The vagus supplies the heart muscle with preganglionic neurons. Your heart beats. The vagus moves your digestive system, and the secretory fibers of the vagus are why saliva and mucus are in your throat and larynx. The vagus controls the smooth muscles in your bronchi and esophagus. The vagus is the reason you can swallow. The left side of the vagus slows the left ventricle (AV node), which is why you don’t have ventricular tachycardia. The right vagus slows down the atria (sinoatrial, SA node) and is the reason you don’t have atrial fibrillation.

The motor fibers of the vagus follow the esophagus through the diaphragm and control the esophageal sphincter, which keeps stomach contents out of the esophagus. The vagus is the reason you don’t have reflux.

When you are under stress, your muscles and brain need glucose from the blood. The vagus has fibers to the liver that prevent the liver from producing glucose. These vagal fibers need to be quiet as the stress response of the sympathetic nerves and adrenal glands sends signals to the liver to pump out more glucose so you can run.

The visceral sensory fibers of the vagus are the reason you know you have pain everywhere in your abdomen—stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, and intestines. The vagus in the stomach has stretch receptors that tell you when to stop eating. The vagus sensory fibers are the reason you feel hunger, satiety and nausea. The visceral pain information from your heart, esophagus, and windpipe travels up the vagus and makes you cough, telling you that you have angina. The pressure receptors in the aortic arch and airway tell your heart to slow down before something ruptures. There are chemoreceptors from the vagus in the aorta that tell your system that you need more bicarbonate from the pancreas. The vagal chemoreceptors in the upper small intestine make you crave certain foods because you need certain nutrients. These chemoreceptors could also respond to organic chemicals in the blood that your liver can’t process because you lack the enzymes or substrate to break them down. There are no good references for this hypothesis, but it is a reasonable guess.

The recurrent branches of the vagus follow the posterior meningeal artery from the upper cervical spine into the skull. This branch is sensitive to the dilation of blood vessels in the posterior part of the dura. This contributes to the headache feeling that occurs when air pressure drops. Vagus nerve stimulators are approved for the treatment of migraines.

The general sensory fibers of the vagus transmit sensations of touch, pain and temperature from dthe ear and throat area and the larynx. The branch of the vagus for the ear (auricular branch) penetrates the superior vagal jugular ganglion and connects with the C2-3 nerve root and the mandibular (lower) branch of the cranial nerve V. The general sensory fibers from the pharynx and larynx connect with the motor fibers.

This gets complicated, but stick with it. It all makes sense, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

All general sensory fibers of this part of the vagal synapse are located in the spinal nucleus of cranial nerve V at the point where the roots of cervical nerves 3, 4, and 5 exit the spine. Why is that important? In neurology you learn a memory trick: “C3-4-5 keep the diaphragm alive.” This is why if you stick a cotton swab too far into your ear, you’ll cough. This is why you cough when you get something down your throat that you didn’t even know you swallowed. The sensory fibers of the vagus connect with the motor fibers of the nerve roots that control your diaphragm and make you cough before you even realize it. It is automatic.19

Essentially, the vagus nerve is what keeps you alive. It beats and controls your heart, moves your digestive system, prevents you from choking, allows you to empty your bowels, and tells you what to eat. When you’re full, it tells you that you have inflammation in your liver, pancreas, or intestines. regulates your blood sugar and allows you to breathe and speak.

And the vagus controls your immune system. This is where the vagus plays a crucial role in FMS, CFS and MCS. The vagus calms the immune system through fibers that run from the celiac ganglion to the spleen to calm T cells and macrophages, and from the splenic nerve to the spleen to control antibody responses. Signals from the (afferent) vagus tell the brain when an infection, stress or physical trauma is imminent. The brain sends signals along the vagus that instruct the vagus to turn off or shut down. The (efferent) vagus via the celiac and splenic ganglia does NOT switch off now

the macrophages, T cells and antibodies in the spleen. When faced with infection, stress, threat, or trauma, the vagus must be shut down to facilitate survival. The spleen and immune system must increase inflammation to fight infection and repair trauma.21

Take a moment and think about it. When life is good, the vagus slows your heart rate, digests your food, reduces inflammation, and calms the immune response. When faced with threat, stress, infection, or trauma, you do not need to digest your food and therefore do not require digestive enzymes, stomach acid, or intestinal motility. You don’t need bronchial relaxation or a slow heartbeat; You need stress hormones and the sympathetic nerves to dilate your bronchi and speed up your heartbeat so you can run. You don’t need to sleep right now because if the danger subsides even for a moment, you could miss your chance to escape. You have to run away from the “tiger” that is chasing you.

When the vagus tells the brain that there is an infection, threat, stress or trauma, it sends these signals from the body to the vagal nuclei in the medulla and this message goes directly to the stress centers of the limbic system in the midbrain, the amygdala and on to the hippocampus and other. The amygdala registers and conveys emotions and feelings. The hippocampus stores every “tiger” you have ever encountered in subconscious, rarely conscious, or sometimes conscious memory. Every infection, physical trauma, emotional trauma, and stress or threat is stored in the hippocampus so that the next time it encounters that threat, the hippocampus can more quickly remember how to escape it. Short-term memory is reduced. There is only the “Tiger”. Long-term memory is specific to everything bad that has ever happened, because the only thing you have to remember is how you escaped the “tiger” last time. Therefore, patients can only remember being sick since childhood. The threat receptors literally fire faster when there are very few objective external stimuli because the hippocampus remembers the last time that “tiger” posed a threat.

And it doesn’t matter what the “tiger” is. The “tiger” response is primitive and exactly the same whether it is a stressful job, an abusive spouse, starvation and nutritional deficiencies, a broken leg, or a torn connective tissue because you have Ehlers-Danlos syndromesuffering and your connective tissue constantly stretches beyond its integrity or contact with toxic chemicals, a virus, a parasite, a worm, or a tooth or mold infection. When there is an infection, stress, or trauma, the vagus drops, the immune system is unregulated, inflammation increases, and nothing functions properly.

Now take another look at the symptoms of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and MCS. The common features, the unifying factor when knowing all the functions of the vagus, is vagal dysfunction. But no one ever seems to think of it that way, because there is no easy or risk-free way to treat the vagus. No one is going to install a vagus nerve stimulator because you have multiple chemical sensitivities that they aren’t even sure are real. No one is going to install a vagus nerve stimulator because you have a sore throat and swollen lymph glands due to a chronic infection called chronic fatigue syndrome. And they don’t use vagus nerve stimulators for fibromyalgia, even though 86% of fibromyalgia patients have irritable bowel syndrome and don’t digest their food well. It’s just too risky to take them and there are too many potential side effects, and it’s really easier to tell the patient to go on this diet, take these pills and learn to live with it.

If you’re lucky and have the right skills, you can treat the trauma, get rid of the mold, viral, dental or parasitic infection, and the patient is not naturally sensitized by early childhood trauma and the hippocampus communicates to the vagus that the threat is gone and it’s okay to come back. The vagus reappears and the patient recovers. If you and your patient are both lucky.

For illustrations of this unifying hypothesis, see the Kevin Tracy Immune Model slides (PDF) by Carol McMakin.

Case report

The patient was a 49-year-old woman who had suffered from fibromyalgia for 18 years following a car accident. Her pain ranged from 4/10 to 8/10 for 18 years. Her symptoms included headaches, burning pain in the middle of the shoulder blade, hand, arm, leg, foot, neck, back, and jaw pain.22-28 Over the years, she had asthma, allergies, acne, and irritable bowel syndrome developed and was diagnosed with candida infection of the digestive system overgrowth.

Fortunately, her body pain responded to the frequency-specific microcurrent treatment for fibromyalgia associated with spinal trauma.29-30 As the pain subsided so that it was consistently below 4/10, her digestion improved, her immune system calmed down, and allergies subsided. and environmental factors disappeared, the asthma disappeared, her sleep improved, and her fatigue disappeared as her adrenal function and circadian rhythms returned.31

She had twenty treatments

She was born between December 8 and March 15 and used a home microcurrent device as often as necessary to keep her body pain below 4/10 at all times. She received physical therapy to repair the pain triggers in her neck and two sets of facet injections. She used a combination medication to repair her intestines. Her acne and night vision disappeared when she was given an oil-based vitamin A supplement. No genetic testing has been performed, but it has been suggested that some patients cannot convert beta-carotene into the active form of vitamin A. On February 8, after eight weeks of treatment, she no longer met the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. Without medication, her pain was consistently between 2/10 and 4/10. She slept well without medication and her irritable bowel syndrome disappeared. She was released from treatment on March 15 and moved to Colorado in June, where her recovery continued for at least six years.

Think of all the confusing, multisystem symptoms that were simply a result of body pain that lasted between 4/10 and 8/10 for 18 years. The body pain was eliminated by treating inflammation in the spinal cord, but the activation of the immune system, allergies and asthma were due to the vagus.

Irritable bowel syndrome and candida. If your intestines don’t move and your pancreas continues to secrete bicarbonate but your stomach doesn’t secrete as much acid as usual, your intestinal contents become alkaline and candida loves an alkaline environment. The friendly acid-loving bacteria don’t thrive and they don’t produce short-chain fatty acids and other products that repair your intestinal wall. The vagus. Again.

The sleeping placeörung disappeared because the “tiger” was gone. The amygdala and hippocampus kept the threat response high because if the pain was 7/10, there had to be a “tiger.” When the pain was 2-4/10, the tiger was gone and sleep was welcome.

We were lucky because she had no early childhood trauma to maintain sensitization, and the vagus resurfaced on its own once the pain subsided. In 2000, when she was a patient, vagal treatment had not yet been developed.

In 2020, the vagus can be treated with FSM and treating the vagus can improve reaction speed; However, if the cause of vagal dysfunction is not addressed, the limbic system can turn off the vagus more quickly than turn it back on. Knowing how the vagus works and how it produces symptoms in so many body systems helps make sense of it all and makes the patient presentation less overwhelming.

If you look for and address the cause of the infection, stress, threat, pain or trauma, and if you are lucky, the limbic system will calm down and the vagus will reactivate. If you need a little more luck, Frequency Specific Microcurrent can give you a tool to directly calm the limbic system and reactivate the vagus.

References

• Yunus M, Masi AT, Calabro JJ, et al. “Primary Fibromyalgia (Fibrositis): Clinical Study of 50 Patients with Matched Normal Controls,” Arthritis and Rheumatism Seminars. 1981; 11(1): 151-171.
• Bennett, RM. Adult growth hormone deficiency in patients with fibromyalgia, Curr Rheumatology 2002, August 4 (4) 306-12)
• Moldofsky H, Saskin P and Salem L. “Sleep and symptoms of post-infectious neuromyasthenia and fibrositis syndrome,” Sleep Research. 1997;16:492.
• Wolf F, Smythe HA, Yunus MB, et al. “Criteria for Fibromyalgia” Arthritis and Rheumatism. 1989;32(suppl.):S47.
• Crawford LJ. “Neuroendocrine abnormalities in fibromyalgia.” American Journal of Medical Sciences. 1998; 315(6): 359-366.
• Crawford LJ, Engleberg NC and Demitrack MA. “Neurohormonal Disorders in Fibromyalgia.” Rheumatic Disease Clinics in North America. 1996; 22(2): 267-284.
• Crawford LJ, Pillemer SR, Kalogeras KT, et al. “Disorders of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in patients with fibromyalgia.” Arthritis and rheumatism. 1994; 37(11):1583-1592.
• Neeck G and Riedel W. “Hormonal Disorders in Fibromyalgia Syndrome.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1999; 876: 325-338.
• Maes M, et al., Serotonergic markers and reduced plasma concentrations of branched-chain amino acids in fibromyalgia, Psychiatry Research, Vol. 97, Issue 1, December 2000, pp. 11-20.
• Dessein PH, Shipton EA, Stanwix AE, et al. “Hyposecretion of adrenal androgens and the relationship between serum adrenal steroids and serotonin ***” Pain. 1999; 83(2): 313-319.
• Dessein PH, Shipton EA, Stanwix AE, et al. “Neuroendocrine deficit-mediated development and persistence of pain in fibromyalgia.” Pain. 2000; 86(3): 213-215.
• Juhl J, Fibromyalgia and the serotonin pathway, Alternative Medicine Review, Vol. 3, Number 5, 1998
• McMakin C. Fibromyalgia: An Alternative View. Austin Rheumatology, October 2018
• Fibromyalgia Network: Newsletter for patients with fibromyalgia syndrome/chronic fatigue syndrome. July 1994.
• Kroenke K, Wood DO, Mangelsdorff AD, et al., Chronic fatigue in primary care. Prevalence, patient characteristics and outcome. JAMA. 1988; 260: 929-934
• Holmes GP, Kaplan JE, GantzNM et al. Chronic fatigue syndrome: a work case definition. Ann Intern Med. 1988; 108: 387-389
• Jones JF, Ray CG, Minnich LL, et al., Evidence of active Epstein-Barr virus infection in patients with persistent, unexplained illness: elevated anti-early antigen antibodies., Ann Intern Med. 1985; 102: 1-7
• Graveling RA, Pilkington A, George, J, et al, A review of multiple chemical sensitivity, Occup Environ Med, 1999; 56: 73-85
• Kandel E, Schwartz J: Principles of Neural Science, second edition. Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1985: pp. 331–336
• Carter R, The Human Brain Book, 2nd edition, DK, London, New York, 2014
• Tracey, K.J. (2007). Physiology and immunology of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 117(2), 289-296
• Cloward RB: Cervical discography: mechanisms of neck, shoulder and arm pain. Annals of Surgery 150: 1052 – 1064, 1959
• Busklla D, Neuman L, Valsberg G, Alkalay D, Wolfe F.: Increased rates of fibromyalgia after injuryCervical spine etching: a controlled study of 161 cases of traumatic injury. arthritis and rheumatism; 40: 446-452, 1997
• Bogduk N: The innervation of the cervical intervertebral discs. SPINE 13: 2-8, 1988
• Olmarker K, Blomquist J, Stromberg J, et al. “Inflammatogenic properties of the nucleus pulposus.” SPINE. 1995; 20: 665-669.
• Olmarker K, Rydevik B, Nordberg C. “Autologous nucleus pulposus induces neurophysiological and histological changes in the nerve roots of the cauda equina of pigs.” SPINE. 1993; 18: 1425-32.
• Ozaktay AC, Cavanaugh JM, Blagoev DC. “Phospholipase A2 – induced electrophysiological and histological changes in rabbit dorsal lumbar spine tissue.” SPINE. 1995; 20: 2659-68.
• Ozaktay AC, Kallakuri S, Cavanaugh JM. “Phospholipase A2 sensitivity of the dorsal root and dorsal root ganglion.” SPINE. 1998; 23(12): 1297-1306.
• Cytokine changes with microcurrent therapy for fibromyalgia associated with cervical trauma.” McMakin C, Gregory W, Phillips T, Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, July 2005, 9 169-176
• Microcurrent therapy in the treatment of fibromyalgia”; Fibromyalgia Syndrome: A Practitioner’s Guide to Treatment, 3rd Edition, Leon Chaitow, Elsevier Science Press, Edinburgh, 2008
• Moldofsky H. “Rheumatic pain modulation syndrome: The interrelationship between sleep, central nervous system serotonin, and pain.” Advances in Neurology. 1982; 33:51-57.
• Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities – A Unified Hypothesis (link is external) was originally published in the Townsend Letter, November 2020. Used with permission.