Clinical Ecology/Environmental Medicine

The specialty in medicine in which doctors assist patients in uncovering the cause and effect relationship between their environment and their ill-health, and help them learn to avoid those inciting factors, is called Environmental Medicine. The theory is that a wide variety of illnesses, symptoms and complaints of ‘unknown causes’ actually result from a person’s reactions to foods, pollution, chemical substances or other environmental factors.

The term ‘allergy’ was created to describe an abnormal response to substances that your system recognises as foreign. Allergy can produce symptoms in almost every organ of the body and often masquerade as other diseases. Allergy can affect your muscles, joints, the nervous system, skin, eyes and many other parts of the body.

To diagnose your condition, a detailed environmentally oriented history must be taken by your physician. You may be asked to keep a food and behaviour diary to complete the history. Each complaint or symptom is traced chronologically, possible cause and effect relationships to environmental exposures are explored. This history, together with an objective physical examination, leads to a provisional diagnosis which is used to direct the ‘testing’. The ‘testing’ determines those substances causing your symptoms and which treatment will improve your condition.

Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine https://www.acnem.org/
Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine