mold avoidance has been known to help with multiple chemical sensitivity, whereas one remains always sensitive to mold...
that hasn't been true in my experience. i had severe reactions to mold, i did mold avoidance for a number of years and was diagnosed with mold toxicity by several mold specialists. DNRS brought down my mold reactivity from completely debilitating to not affecting my life. i've heard of at least 8 or so other cases of people bringing down or eliminating their mold reactions by doing brain retraining. therefore i see MCS and mold reactions as having the same mechanism. i think people often develop MCS while living in a mold home, though, which may be a source of confusion about that.
the brain is involved in regulating the immune system, there's a lot of research about this- it's actually a field called psychoneuroimmunology. that said, i don't think hyperreactivity and toxicity are the same issue although they co occur and are related in many cases.
---------------
from Robert Naviaux's paper on the CDR
"The default state in both the brain and peripheral tissues is CDR activation.
In the absence of additional information, danger and threat are as-
sumed. Healing is an active process that requires positive reinforcement
with non-danger, safety and security signals from the brain.
The brain controls metabolism and exit from the CDR
The last step in the healing cycle, CDR3, is ended when the brain re-
establishes bidirectional neuroendocrine and autonomic communica-
tion with each organ system. Only after the brain re-integrates meta-
bolism over the periodized course of wakeful activity and restorative
sleep can the health cycle be re-established."
Robert Naviaux actually wrote the introduction to Dr. Neil Nathan's book Toxic which is a clinical approach based on "rebooting" the cell danger response and in the book Neil Nathan recommends various forms of brain retraining and says it's something he tells his patients to do. Obviously, I wouldn't draw the conclusion that Dr Naviaux is recommending it but I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that your brain is involved in exiting the CDR and that brain retraining can help your brain send safety signals to the rest of your body.
----------------------
i also was very resistant to the idea that my mind was affecting my illness somehow but based on my experiences, i believe it is, greatly. That doesn't mean there isn't something physically wrong and that we don't deserve excellent treatments and clinical research into pharmaceutical therapies, I have plenty of labs documenting physiological abnormalities and I seek out medical treatment for those. Maybe other people are not as affected by their mind, I'm not interested in trying to convince people but empirically, brain retraining helped me significantly. I very much see it as a treatment with physiological effects. When you shift your body towards a relaxation response (my body is always looping in a stress response) it changes physiologically, you digest and detoxify better. Your immune system calms down.
there's good scientific evidence that people are more vulnerable to every major disease, from heart disease, to autoimmune diseases and cancers if they have experienced significant childhood trauma. That doesn't mean those diseases aren't real or physical.
