During the years that I was ill I would suddenly go from strength to weakness without knowing why. The weakness gave me what I called jelly legs. I couldn’t walk or concentrate when it hit me. Jan had to carry me home from our short walks several times and we had no idea why it happened. The Naturopathic Doctor I was seeing, Peter Wilhelmsson, figured out methods to strengthen me but he soon realized that I needed to be able to carry them out on my own as he couldn’t pick up the pieces 24/7. I would need to understand how my body worked in order to figure this out as the treatment wasn’t the same each time. So part of my recovery would need to be training in natural health care methods. His nutrition company Alpha Plus held basic and advanced practitioner courses and he generously sponsored this part of my education. But as he was born in Sweden and grew up in America he was challenged when writing in Swedish. My contribution was to proof read books and articles that he was writing. My own language combination gave me a huge advantage when it came to deciphering his Swenglish.
It turned out that apart from getting parasites in India and Zimbabwe, I had some tough viruses that I hadn’t completely got over. My dental combo of amalgam, gold and plastic had no doubt contributed to my chemical sensitivity. It also turned out that we had mould in our kitchen and bathroom. Our boiler had boiled over a couple of times and leaked into the woodwork probably causing mould.
I was extremely sensitive to my environment. I was like the canaries they used in the mines of old before the days of electronic safety alarms. When the canaries fled the mine and the miners no longer heard their singing and they knew that the air was no longer safe to breathe. They had to get out. I knew that the environment that I was living in wasn’t safe when I lost all my energy. Gradually we found ways to make our home safer for me. Initially we had to take out our carpets, flower pots and even Benaja, our Norwegian forest cat who had to spend more time outside – which he luckily loved! I didn’t tolerate perfumes in soap or dishwashing liquid. I was one of the earlier environmental casualties of the early 1980’s and so were our children who had to put up with all this upheaval. The worst part of it for all of us was that my total lack of energy meant that I was unable to spend adequate time with our children for a couple of years.
But back to the humble beginnings in 1987. When I attended the health care classes I lay on a mat at the back of the class. Most of it passed me by as I was often in pain and unable to concentrate. But once I got home I poured over the notes that had been handed out and gradually began to understand what it was all about. I knew what it felt like when my energy was restored and I asked Jan to help me recreate this. We would clear the kitchen table once the kids had gone to bed and as I lay there, Jan tested my muscles while I used my notes to figure out what points or muscles to activate in order to restore my energy. It worked! Within 6 months I seldom had jelly legs, my energy was better and I began putting back weight.
We spent the summer of 1989 sleeping in the Wilhemssons garden shed in Strand, Falun. Our children were given odd jobs, Jan converted their garage to become a clinic and I sorted out Peters archives and wrote the book “Help! what can I eat?” A self-help book about food rotation. By the end of the summer the Wilhelmssons asked us to consider moving to Falun and working for them. It felt like a tough move for our children who were 12 and 10. Kjersti was positive, Joffe wasn’t. But by Christmas we had all agreed to give it a try.
And then one night in February 1990 Peter Wilhelmsson called and asked Jan if he could work for him at Alpha Plus. One of the workers in the warehouse had suddenly left and they urgently needed new personnel. Next morning Jan was on the bus to Falun at 6 am and he worked there until 2009 when he retired. For Jan it was amazing that he found permanent employment at the age of 50. We started looking for a new home and moved to Falun in April and I started part time work on May 2nd. The house we found looks out over Hosjö, a beautiful lake. We have lived here ever since.
At this point there was no formal education in Sweden for health care practitioners. Teachers were brought to Sweden from the US, Germany and Britain and I was priviledged to learn from the best. The Nordic Nutrition School was later created but one of the first steps was to create a professional association: NMTF – Näringsmedicinska Terapeut Förbundet. Once I had completed my initial health care education I started to work in the IFM clinic – Integrated Functional Medicine Clinic in Falun. I continued taking further courses and eventually achieved a Masters in Clinical Nutrition from Middlesex University in London, England.
When I started work at the clinic I was told to warn my patients that if they took cleansing supplements their contraceptive pills might not work as they would be cleansed too. The response I got was that they longed to become pregnant so that wasn’t an issue and we went ahead. In fact there were 5 couples amongst my patients in the early 1990’s who were unable to get pregnant. One of the men in this group was working at a recycling station where he sorted batteries. He told me how the batteries lay in water and he used his hands to do the sorting. No wonder his toxic mercury levels were high. When he understood the risks he moved to another job.
The couples learnt how they could support their health and minimize risks as much as possible by eating organic food 83 % free from pesticides at the time, by using a sauna once or preferably twice a week, reducing caffeinated beverages to one a day and taking food supplements. It was suggested that they wait for a year before trying to get pregnant again as the environment within their detoxifying bodies could affect a foetus in many ways. It would be better to wait till their detox systems were fully functioning again as seen by analysis. They followed the recommendations and after a year they were all able to get pregnant and eventually give birth to healthy children.
Why would these diseases suddenly hit in our lifetime? Is it a coincidence that hormonal cancers, like breast and prostate cancers, are on the rise and that levaxin (for thyroid problems) is one of the most common drugs? The danger of hormone disrupters was discovered by accident. Researcher Ana Soto obtained strange results at Tufts Medical Center, Boston, USA. She knew that breast cancer cells grew madly when they were exposed to estrogen, but she didn’t understand why the breast cancer cells being tested in the test tubes she was testing, grew even though they weren’t exposed to estrogen. It turned out that the clinic had changed from glass to plastic test tubes and that phthalates, with strong estrogen-like properties, leach out of plastic when cleaned at the high temperatures used in a laboratory. Plastic, which was thought to be so harmless. When I read this I began to realize why it was becoming so common for young people to have problems conceiving and completing a pregnancy which is dependant on the fine balance of estrogen and progesterone throughout.
Phthalates mimic sex hormones. They act as a monkey wrench in normal hormonal chemistry, damaging the cells’ receptors, the sites where the real hormones attach to the cell’s surface to trigger hormonal biochemistry. By blocking and sabotaging normal function, these hormone-disrupting environmental toxins can cause infertility, fatigue, depression, emotional imbalance, memory loss, endometriosis (inflammation of the lining of the uterus) and decreased sex drive. Since the cell’s receptors for hormones are now damaged, taking hormone drugs can also be ineffective. In addition, the risk of hormone-related cancer in the breast, prostate and testicles increases.
Hormone-like environmental toxins, with plastics and phthalates at the top of the list of harmful chemicals, can have a very serious impact on a fetus or young child. These environmental toxins can disrupt the signals in the body’s biochemistry. Many of the toxins damage the thyroid gland, which is extremely important during pregnancy in terms of the development of the child’s brain and adult intelligence. Reduced resources in schools are blamed for poorer academic results but that may not be the real reason. The negative social and economic effects of chemicals are extensive.
Anyone who wants to reduce the risks of hormone-related cancer of the breast, uterus, ovaries, testicles, prostate and thyroid gland should consider removing environmental toxins from the body. It is also important to avoid exposure to plasticizers or softeners as these act as artificial fertilizers for cancer. So if a woman already has high levels of estrogen-like chemical compounds in her body – it would be unlikely for her to become pregnant and give birth without higher levels of progesterone. There are no progesterone-like chemical compounds.
We worry about the fate of the environment – our lands, oceans, plants, insects and animals. What about the fate of humans 80 years after mass production of chemicals began? Natural farming has been tested for thousands of years, farming with massive amounts of chemicals has only been tested for 80 years and we’re already noticing the downside. The body cleanses itself naturally until it gets so overloaded that the ability to cleanse becomes limited.
By now I was deeply concerned. What would happen to all the children who were exposed to estrogen-like chemical compounds throughout their lives? Would they ever be able to produce children or have grandchildren? I figured out that around 2015 young people who live in industrialized countries would begin to notice the effect on fertility. Sadly, this assessment was accurate. But having seen how the 5 couples had turned their lives around and given birth to healthy children, I wanted to share the risks, the challenges and the possible solutions. I started to write a book called Kanariefåglarna ryter literally translated: A yellow canary alert. It took 5 years to research and write and it came out in Swedish in 2005. Just about the time of the EU REACH agreement on chemical restriction. In Sweden the environmental party gave one of these books to every new member. A summary with chapters on The story of life; Air; Water; Food; Into the knots; can be read on my website – press Translate if it doesn’t come up automatically.
In travelling around Sweden to launch the book I suggested that we all could help to reduce the use of hormone disruptors like parabens and phthalates by a simply asking if the cosmetic, skin care, shampoo and cleaning material was free from parabens and phthalates… starting with food stores, department stores, pharmacies and even health food stores. Five years later I was at a pharmacy waiting for a prescription for my husband. As usual I looked for products that were free from parabens and phthalates. To my amazement I found a little handmade shelf with a handwritten label: Free from parabens and phthalates! It had worked and this was just the beginning.
We had succeeded in making the producers aware that we, the people, wanted products without hormone disruptors. We have responsibility for our own lives and wellbeing. It is therefore our right to know what we put into, on and around our bodies and to know exactly what is in a product that we buy. This information is often unavailable. You shouldn’t have to be a chemist in order to go shopping but today it is difficult to find reliable information about known product health risks. Consumers want an answer to the simple question: “Is this product safe for me and my children?“
Now was the time to take this to the next stage and I sought out 2 researcher colleagues to see if we could create a way that we consumers could scan a product barcode and make personal assessments of the products that we choose to buy. It started with a simple excel file which I brought home to Rob Verkerk. Late that evening when his children had gone to bed, I put the excel print out in front of Rob and asked him if he could help me figure out a way to make a database and app for consumer use. He was quiet for a long time before he finally said, “I want to do this!”
We planned a meeting in Stockholm with Fiorella Belpoggi currently the director of the Ramazani Institute in Italy and started to create ToxXscan, committed to reducing chemical hazards in the world. It was designed as a tool that enabled the world to regain control of the environment. ToxXsan was eventually developed by scientists from Ramazzini Institute, the Alliance for Natural Health and my company EnvirohealthMatters with the support of the Science Park Incubator in Uppsala.
Producers, wholesalers and sales personnel want to make money but according to our research, they also want to provide good and healthy products. The challenge is the lack of access to relevant and easily accessible information about product ingredients. ToxXscan was created to provide an open interface to data on known chemical health risks and generated a colour-coded risk assessment that a child can understand and links to research that an adult understands. It provided an interface to a risk assessment of known chemical hazards by interrogating the latest research findings via a number of established databases, analyzing the data, and providing a presentation of a known chemical or product risk assessment.
As consumers we can help producers to realise that we want safer products. They can link their production chain to the ToxXscan database and discover safer alternatives. This could be seen as a win win situation for us all as producers want a safe production and environment for their workers. ToxXscan could help to provide a safer environment as it provides facts on known chemical health risks in products, based on published research without scaremongering and with access to relevant published research. It enables companies to interrogate chemicals used in production against the database making it possible to replace harmful ingredients. ToxXscan provided access to a colour-coded risk assessment of known chemical hazards. Simply scanning a barcode or ingredient by means of a device that is linked to ToxXscan’s interface, for instance a smart phone, and enabling access to a colour coded risk assessment related to the product.
The risk assessment colour code showed:
Green: No ingredients with known health risks.
Amber: The source is hidden or a known health risks exists, but none with known carcinogenic, reproductive or endocrine disrupting potential.
Red: Ingredients with known carcinogenic, toxic to reproduction or endocrine disruptive risks are found.
Our demo showed that many products actually contain red- and orange-coded ingredients. That is reality. We would all prefer totally green-coded products, without any known chemical health risks. ToxXscan makes it easier for the producer to identify red and amber ingredients and change to green ingredients that don’t jeopardize health. 90% of consumers surveyed want information about known health risks BUT without scaremongering – based on our survey conducted in the summer of 2013. The most frequent question we got is “When can we start using it?”
At this point I contacted a former general secretary of our Swedish chemical authority KEMI. KEMI is funded by producers of chemicals and fights for the rights of the chemical industry. Our meeting was planned secretively. I got the distinct impression that she was giving me a warning to be careful but she was at the same time thrilled to hear about ToxXscan. She wanted me to succeed. She also warned me to be careful!
ToxXscan’s team was in collaboration with the EEB, the European Environmental Bureau and other environmentally active authorities and organizations around Europe. We were in discussion about producing ToxXscan together. Rob Verkerk and I were booked to leave for Brussels on 23rd March 2016 to present ToxXscan to this group. The night before there was a terror attack in Brussels A series of coordinated terrorist attacks were staged in the Brussels Airport and the metro in the morning of March 22, at least 26 people were killed and dozens wounded and we decided to postpone our participation until the next meeting. Little did we realize that others then grasped this opportunity on March 23rd to their advantage.
A few months later, someone I knew who worked KEMI, called and asked me if I knew that the EU chemical authorities had decided to bring out a common app – a little like ToxXscan but in only covered the 32 harmful chemical ingredients according to the EU REACH agreement that the chemical industry had fought so hard to limit. I was given the name of the Swedish person responsible and contacted her in early June. She asked me what part of the project I wanted to work on, I told her the database. She promised to hear back after the summer she but never did. I kept on contacting KEMI and tried to get onto the team without success. In fact this app never took off, it wasn’t worth the time, as the information provided was unnecessary – all EU products avoided using these ingredients as they were forbidden. But this put a spanner in the works for the EU collaboration to create ToxXscan which exposed cancer risks, XXXXXXXX risks to any given chemical by linking to public databases world wide.
At this point I was 70 years old and I didn’t have the energy to go on. All the research to produce this database still exists and can be made use of should anyone want to provide the backing. I feel sad that we weren’t able to bring ToxXscan fully to life, but I am proud of the battle that all of us who worked on ToxXscan engaged in. Proud of the awareness that we brought to the world about the risks, but also of the alternatives. For the sake of future generations and in particular John, Zuni, Tilda, Juni and Jennifer, I trust that others will continue to make the changes that still need to be made.
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