Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Exposures and emotions

Just a short note about something we at Chemical Injury Information Network already know. When a person inhales a chemical, it goes up the nose, hits the olfactory bulb, and goes straight to the brain. No messing around with the blood-brain barrier.

In the brain, the chemical reaches the hippocampus, very important to logic and emotion. As a practical matter, this means that exposures can leave a person with volatile emotions and impaired logic ability – just about the worst combination at the worst time.

Chemical sensitivity, or MCS, comes with a lot of emotional pain. It can help if people understand that the heightened emotions they feel under exposure are not really theirs – they are artificially produced and will ease off as the exposure wears off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A good friend of mine refers to this as "the chemicals talking".