Health

HEALTH

I will begin by discussing my illnesses, as many of them are rare diseases, and I would like to contribute to raising awareness about them. I will also address their connection to mental health… and how much the genocide in Palestine has affected me in this regard…

Next, I make a series of proposals which, based on what I have seen to be harmful to me, seek to help strengthen the health of others in terms of avoiding toxins on a physical level (endocrine disruptors and EMFs) and on an emotional level (stress). I also give some advice on diet and sleep.

About CSSs/NP, especially MCS and EHS…

At the end of 2019, I had food poisoning. The antibiotics I was given caused an overgrowth of a very aggressive intestinal bacterium, which led to severe weight loss. They managed to control the bacteria with more antibiotics, but then I became depressed. I combined psychotherapy with medication for depression, but it threw my body out of balance again, starting with my thyroid, and I developed pain throughout my body, extreme fatigue, insomnia, skin rashes, etc.

After much trial and error, at the end of 2021 I was diagnosed with several central sensitisation syndromes (CSSs), recently renamed as nociplastic pain (NP), the main ones being:

Fibromyalgia (FM), a rare disease involving severe pain in various parts of the body, especially the limbs and hips.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a rare disease involving very high levels of fatigue that do not improve with sleep.
Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), a rare disease involving a strong reaction of the body to chemicals (cleaning or personal hygiene products, smoke, etc.).
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), a rare disease involving a strong reaction of the body to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), including low frequency (electricity), but especially high frequency (Wi-Fi).

I was diagnosed at the Hospital Clínic from Barcelona, where Spain’s leading experts in the treatment of CSSs/NP are based.

These diseases affect a very high percentage of women (around 85% of patients are women) and have not yet been sufficiently researched.

There is no consensus on what causes these diseases, the cause of CSSs. One possible cause is exposure to toxins that act as endocrine disruptors. There may also be a genetic origin (in my case, three women on my father’s side of the family suffer from these CSSs). A third cause may be excessive stress (stress is also a toxin, and one of the worst). It is common for all three causes to converge, triggering the full range of symptoms, as was the case with me.

Unfortunately, there is still no treatment for these rare diseases. What there is unanimity on is the importance of: (1) avoiding exposure to chemicals and EMFs; and (2) detoxifying the body. That is why, in the second part of this tab, I focus on giving specific advice on this.

In the absence of treatment, it is important to raise awareness of these diseases to help those of us who suffer from them feel less misunderstood and to encourage research.

That is why the work carried out by associations is so important. I am a member of Electro and Chemical Sensitive People for the Right to Health (EQSDS), an association founded in 2012. EQSDS is in turn part of CONFESQ, an umbrella confederation that brings together associations of all kinds (municipal, provincial, regional and national) of people with our four main illnesses, the ones I listed above.

To support people with MCS and EHS who are still professionally active, CONFESQ published a Green Paper on workplace adaptation in autumn 2025, a book that helps to understand both conditions (please find here an unofficial translation into English done with DeepL).

It would be a dream to have white zones in Spain, as there are in other EU countries, areas completely free of EMFs, where people with EHS could live, but they do not yet exist.

The only thing that helps me when I have flare-ups of my illnesses is to stay in bed, fast, and let time pass, trying to stay calm, without putting pressure on myself for anything, or for any reason… As I am fortunate and blessed to be retired and have a pension, if I cannot do anything, if I cannot move, then I do nothing and I do not move… It is a matter of accepting the new reality that forces me to have very, very limited physical activity and almost no socialisation, for the reasons I explain below.

Due to MCS and EHS, cause us a lot of harm:

cleaning products used in public spaces and transport,
personal hygiene products and fabric softeners used by people,
EMFs from antennas and mobile phones on the street and inside buildings…

All of this greatly limits leaving the house, socialising, mobility, travelling…

In order to live, it becomes necessary to:

protect the place where one lives against EMFs, i.e. shield it;
use eco-friendly, fragrance-free household and personal hygiene products;
consume only pesticide-free, i.e. organic, food.

To better understand what follows, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, I am uploading a video produced by CONFESQ about MCS to try to raise awareness about it.

About CSSs and mental health…

The pain, combined with social isolation, has a very negative impact on mental health, which is already impaired, as these diseases cause neuroinflammation. And, presumably linked to this neuroinflammation, there is, on the one hand, a phenomenon that experts describe as fibro fog or brain fog; and, on the other hand, other pathologies such as anxiety and depression. In general, people who suffer from CSSs and, specifically, MCS don’t tolerate well psychiatric medication, so we have to go through all these mental pathologies unassisted, relying on sheer willpower. This is very difficult, so the situation becomes an explosive cocktail and the suicide rates among people who suffer from these diseases are much higher than average.

Here is a link to a CONFESQ conference on our illnesses and mental health. The first question in the Q&A session (at 1 hour and 27 minutes) is precisely about this: what can be done to address the suicidal impulses of people associated with us who suffer from these illnesses?

Returning to my personal story: as I had not tolerated any of the medications I had been given for pain (corticosteroids, due to their immunosuppressive effect), sleep, or depression (I did not tolerate any of the three antidepressants or the mood stabiliser I had been prescribed), I have to go through it all bare (bedridden, fasting and trying to accept).

Even though the people who love you want to help you, they can’t, there’s no way.

Add to that the fact that you don’t have the strength to explain your problems (you don’t want to fall into ‘victimhood’), and you become more and more isolated…

Pain, insomnia and discouragement, accumulated over time, make life an ordeal. And that has been my life since these illnesses worsened.

The Molotov cocktail of physical and mental pathologies led to my permanent absolute incapacity and subsequent retirement in February 2024, and to my being recognised a 71% impairement in June 2024.

On the anguish caused by the situation in Palestine and in the world…

Palestine is a part of the world with which I have felt a special emotional connection for decades. Seeing innocent people die every day in Palestine, seeing live images of the genocide being carried out by Israeli Zionism in both Gaza and the West Bank (even though the spotlight is no longer there, the tragedy continues) and how it has used hunger as a weapon of war, tears me apart and has made my pathologies worse.

But unfortunately, it is not just Palestine. We live in a world that is pure social iatrogenesis. Our society is sick, because it allows a few – those who control the money – to disregard the rules of international coexistence that we have imposed on ourselves, to disregard public international law, to disregard the laws of war and, most seriously, to disregard international humanitarian law, resulting in an unjust, unequal and very, very violent world.

A world that has created the perfect drugs for us to escape from this violence (from designer drugs to films and medication).

A world in which sensitive people drown…

1. Environmental control

It is important to practise so-called “environmental control” to avoid continuing to fill the body with toxins. We must free ourselves from toxins on a physical, emotional and all other levels. I will now address this.

1.1. Avoiding toxins on a physical level

Tobacco, alcohol and drugs

There are a number of toxic products that we all know are toxic to the body and yet are frequently consumed, such as tobacco, alcohol and drugs. I recommend avoiding these substances completely.

Endocrine disruptors

Beyond the above, we must try to eliminate endocrine disruptors from our environment. Endocrine disruptors are chemical substances (most, if not all, derived from petroleum) that affect hormonal balance and have an undesirable effect on human health, such as pesticides, phthalates, phenols, dioxins, PCBs, perfluorinated compounds, etc., as well as heavy metals. I recommend this informative book by Dr. Nicolás de Olea.

Specifically, it is important to eliminate endocrine disruptors from different areas of our lives, as the headline would say, ‘let’s eliminate plastics from our lives’.

Below are some suggestions for products that have worked well for me (although I was not fully aware of all this until I was already ill):

Our clothes and shoes should avoid petroleum-based fabrics, and we should seek to use organic wool or cotton.

For household cleaning, I recommend the Murcia-based company SOLYECO, and for personal hygiene, the Danish company Urte Kram. It is important to use fluoride-free toothpaste and it is essential not to use fabric softeners, as they all contain petroleum-derived parabens and are very harmful to our health.

It is important that our food and drink and their packaging are organic. Although the price is slightly higher, not ingesting toxins makes up for it.
Kitchen utensils should avoid Teflon and plastic, and food should always be stored and/or frozen in glass containers rather than plastic ones.
We must ensure that electrical appliances comply with the European Restriction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) Directive 2011/65/EU, transposed into Spanish law by RD 219/2013, extended by RD 993/2022. It restricts lead, mercury, cadmium, PBB, PBDE, etc.
For our home furnishings, we should try to choose furniture made of wood or glass, not melamine.
DIY products should be as non-polluting as possible.

In Spain, an annual fair is organised, Biocultura, where all kinds of organic and ecological products are exhibited, which I recommend visiting.

The quality of the air we breathe is essential, which is why it is so important to monitor air quality in cities and in our homes. Many of the substances that act as endocrine disruptors are also known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as formaldehydes in melamine, and when inhaled, they seriously harm our health and should be avoided.

Electromagnetic fields

A third area to control, now more than ever, is electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

One of the leading researchers on EMFs in Spain is Ceferino Maestu Unturbe, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. At the conference organised by SOCSA in April 2022, Maestu explained that our bodies have evolved to adapt to solar radiation and the Earth’s electromagnetic field, but that our bodies: (1) are not adapted to current EMFs (electricity and new technologies); and (2) do not have systems to control the thermal and non-thermal effects (induction, resonance and reorientation) of non-ionising radiation.

Maestu also questioned the fact that governments are more concerned with the progress of digitalisation than with protecting health, and that the WHO continues to deny EHS, a denial that is significantly influenced by the telecommunications industry (the third largest industry in the world).

A paradigmatic case has been that of the great Swedish researcher Olle Johansson, who, after having succeeded in getting EHS recognised in that country as a cause of impairment, and, above all, after predicting, based on his scientific studies, that by 2030, 25% of the world’s population would suffer from EHS, was forced to leave the institute where he was conducting research in Sweden and was forced to seek crowdfunding on social media in order to continue researching and disseminating his findings.

Specifically, to limit the adverse effects of EMFs, I recommend the following individual guidelines:

Conduct a study of EMFs in your home and workplace. Meters are available for purchase (I have a ‘Safe & Sound Pro II’ for high frequencies and a ‘ME 3830B from Gigahertz Solutions’ for low frequencies, which you can see in this photo and which work very well) or you can hire the services of experts.
Shield your place of residence. This involves painting the walls with a German carbon and graphite shielding paint, black as charcoal; putting vinyl or shielding mesh on the windows.
Completely avoid cordless landline telephones due to their high emission levels.

Avoid using mobile phones with Wi-Fi signals altogether and instead use mobile phones connected to the internet via an Ethernet cable. To do this, shielded cables must be run inside the walls, allowing for a healthy internet installation throughout the house.
Never type directly on a laptop, always use an external keyboard and mouse. Install a grounding cable on all computers.
Install dirty frequency filters, at least one in the house’s electrical panel and another in the refrigerator, and use power strips with dirty frequency filters.
Avoid energy-saving light bulbs, especially if they break, as they contain mercury, a neurotoxin that damages the immune system. Replace them with incandescent bulbs (the old ones, which are better for your health, although they were not very efficient as they emitted 90% heat and only 10% light) or bio-LEDs, which are free from the pulses of LED bulbs, pulses that distort the neurological system, similar to the effect of video game console flickering, which can cause epilepsy.
At night, when you go to sleep, you should turn off the switches on the electrical panel for the entire house (with the sole exception of the refrigerator and water heater), especially if electrical cables run behind the headboard of the bed in the bedroom. This will facilitate night-time rest and deep sleep.

All of this is especially important for children and pregnant women. There are an increasing number of studies correlating EMFs and the huge increase in ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

1.2. Avoid emotional toxins

Stress is a toxin that triggers the metabolic cycle of nitric oxide with free radicals that are harmful to the immune system. It is essential to avoid stress in both your personal and professional life.

To limit stress, a fundamental lesson in life is assertiveness: learning to set healthy boundaries for yourself. This is easy to say and very difficult to do, but it is essential for a person’s emotional health. And emotional health is just as important as physical health, if not more so. Assertiveness basically involves two things: (1) learning to express your opinions, needs and emotions as clearly, simply and directly as possible; and (2) learning to say no.

These boundaries sometimes also involve setting physical limits on interactions on social media; or setting limits on social interactions with certain people who drain our energy (toxic people). You have to be able to do this without feeling bad about it. The priority at all times should be personal well-being (obviously without hurting anyone).

I will discuss psycho-emotional issues in more depth in the Spirituality tab.

1.3. Avoiding toxins at other levels

We live in societies with high levels of violence that are not easy to ignore as human beings, violence that affects our health.

I will discuss issues related to this in more depth in the Sustainable Development and International Relations tabs.

2. Nutrition

I recommend eating a healthy, vegetarian diet, avoiding gluten and sugars and limiting dairy products.

Specifically, the guidelines that work well for me are:

In the morning, drink plenty of water and continue drinking throughout the day.
Mid-morning, eat seasonal acidic fruit with a variety of nuts (without exceeding a total of ten to twelve large nuts, such as walnuts, almonds or Brazil nuts).
At lunchtime, choose one of these options:
- - Legumes (in my case, chickpeas and lentils are the ones that suit me best). It is important that the chickpeas have been previously boiled in water with Kombu seaweed so that the saponin has been removed; this water is then discarded, and the chickpeas are placed in a pressure cooker to cook. I add organic red pepper, organic ground cumin, organic sweet red paprika and ñora pepper. I leave the lentils in the pot for twenty minutes and the chickpeas for an hour and a quarter.
  - Potatoes either with egg (in the form of an omelette) or with vegetables (in the form of lasagne).
  - Mote or corn pasta.
  - Savoury buckwheat tart with seasonal vegetables, etc.
  - And whatever I eat, I always accompany it, every day of my life, with an avocado ripened to perfection.
  - And I cook everything using only organic extra virgin olive oil.

In the evening, some sweet fruit (banana, dates, etc.) or neutral fruit (apple, etc.) and some dairy products (preferably lactose-free). It is best not to have this last meal too late (preferably before 8 pm).

As a supplement, I recommend at least vitamin C. I also find supplements containing vitamins B and D, magnesium and selenium helpful.

Although there is a wide range of processes that can be followed to detoxify the body, I do not want to go into detail, as I am not an expert who can give advice to anyone.

3. Sleep

People with SSC often suffer from insomnia, as I mentioned above. From observation, I infer that the main causes of my insomnia have been and are:

Strong odours nearby, especially at home or in enclosed spaces (which explains why I try to prevent anyone from entering my home if they have not followed the MCS Protocol, and why I avoid entering enclosed buildings).
Eating anything after 8 pm.
Being in contact with electrical devices such as computers, telephones or televisions after mid-afternoon.
Intense interaction with someone, in terms of very intense and deep conversations or arguments.
Having seen shocking images during the day that have been a kick in the stomach and that, when one tries to sleep, come back incessantly.
The full moon, whose influence I find difficult to avoid, and I have to put up with insomnia.
Solar electromagnetic storms. In the countries of the former Soviet Union, this information has been known for decades; in the West, less attention is paid to it. Similar to what I said about the moon, insomnia caused by these storms is difficult for me to avoid.

I mention the above because if you know the cause, it is easier not to despair. Even so, insomnia is frustrating. To try to sleep, I recommend focusing on your breathing, on how the air enters and leaves your nostrils. This is what helps me the most, although insomnia is still one of my worst enemies.

In summary, I recommend:

Avoiding toxins, including stress.
Eating and sleeping well.
Exercising (although in the case of people with CSSs, it should be very gentle exercise).
And trying to do something every day of your life, no matter how small, that makes you happy, that makes your heart sing (in my case, it’s looking at the horizon after sunset and marvelling at the dancing colours).

HEALTH

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