Medical psychology or medico-psychology is the application of psychological principles to the practice of medicine, primarily drug-oriented, for both physical and mental disorders.
Allergies, also known as allergic diseases, are various conditions caused by hypersensitivity of the immune system to typically harmless substances in the environment. These diseases include hay fever, food allergies, atopic dermatitis, allergic asthma, and anaphylaxis. Symptoms may include red eyes, an itchy rash, sneezing, coughing, a runny nose, shortness of breath, or swelling. Note that food intolerances and food poisoning are separate conditions.
Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), also known as idiopathic environmental intolerances (IEI), is an unrecognized and controversial diagnosis characterized by chronic symptoms attributed to exposure to low levels of commonly used chemicals. Symptoms are typically vague and non-specific. They may include fatigue, headaches, nausea, and dizziness.
Internal medicine, also known as general internal medicine in Commonwealth nations, is a medical specialty for medical doctors focused on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of internal diseases in adults. Medical practitioners of internal medicine are referred to as internists, or physicians in Commonwealth nations. Internists possess specialized skills in managing patients with undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes. They provide care to both hospitalized (inpatient) and ambulatory (outpatient) patients and often contribute significantly to teaching and research. Internists are qualified physicians who have undergone postgraduate training in internal medicine, and should not be confused with "interns", a term commonly used for a medical doctor who has obtained a medical degree but does not yet have a license to practice medicine unsupervised.
Ecological health is a term that has been used in relation to both human health and the condition of the environment.
Chelation therapy is a medical procedure that involves the administration of chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body. Chelation therapy has a long history of use in clinical toxicology and remains in use for some very specific medical treatments, although it is administered under very careful medical supervision due to various inherent risks, including the mobilization of mercury and other metals through the brain and other parts of the body by the use of weak chelating agents that unbind with metals before elimination, exacerbating existing damage. To avoid mobilization, some practitioners of chelation use strong chelators, such as selenium, taken at low doses over a long period of time.
Stephen Joel Barrett is an American retired psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fraud. He focuses on consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism.
Clinical ecology was the name given by proponents in the 1960s to a claim that exposure to low levels of certain chemical agents harm susceptible people, causing multiple chemical sensitivity and other disorders. Clinical ecologists are people that support and promote this offshoot of conventional medicine. They often have a background in the field of allergy or otorhinolaryngology, and the theoretical approach is derived in part from classic concepts of allergic responses, first articulated by Theron Randolph and developed by Richard Mackarness.
Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicine, environmental science, chemistry and others, overlapping with environmental pathology. It can be viewed as the medical branch of the broader field of environmental health. The scope of this field involves studying the interactions between environment and human health, and the role of the environment in causing or mediating disease. This specialist field of study developed after the realisation that health is more widely and dramatically affected by environmental factors than previously recognized.
Theron Grant Randolph was a physician, allergist, and researcher from the United States. He studied food allergies, chemical sensitivities, and preventive care. Randolph, along with some other American allergists, objected to the definition of allergies as arising from serological abnormalities; this definition, common among European allergists of Randolph's day, excluded from consideration the kinds of non-immunological adverse environmental reactions that Randolph studied.
Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Techniques (NAET) is a form of alternative medicine which proponents claim can treat allergies and related disorders. The techniques were devised by Devi Nambudripad, a California-based chiropractor and acupuncturist, in 1983, drawing on a combination of ideas from applied kinesiology, acupuncture, acupressure, nutritional management, and chiropractic methods.
Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM), previously called industrial medicine, is a board certified medical specialty under the American Board of Preventative Medicine that specializes in the prevention and treatment of work-related illnesses and injuries.
The American Academy of Disaster Medicine (AADM) was founded in 2006 to promote the science and art of disaster healthcare. It is one of the newest medical organizations in the world. On October 18, 2007 the American Academy of Disaster Medicine was also the first medical organization in history to fulfill a Presidential mandate that called for the formal organization of disaster healthcare. AADM was instrumental in establishing disaster medicine as a recognized medical specialty; a certifying board, the American Board of Disaster Medicine was approved by the American Board of Physician Specialties in 2004. The Academy's headquarters is in Tampa, Florida.
Medical toxicology is a subspecialty of medicine focusing on toxicology and providing the diagnosis, management, and prevention of poisoning and other adverse effects due to medications, occupational and environmental toxicants, and biological agents. Medical toxicologists are involved in the assessment and treatment of a wide variety of problems, including acute or chronic poisoning, adverse drug reactions (ADRs), drug overdoses, envenomations, substance abuse, industrial accidents, and other chemical exposures.
The American Osteopathic College of Occupational & Preventive Medicine (AOCOPM) is the national osteopathic medical specialty college for preventive medicine physicians, founded in 1979. AOCOPM consists of three divisions of population-based medicine: Aerospace & Hyperbaric medicine, Occupational & Environmental medicine and Public Health & General Preventive medicine. AOCOPM is an affiliate society of the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), AOCOPM is currently located in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Claudia S. Miller, an allergist and immunologist, is an author, instructor, and scientist noted for research in chemical intolerance, and development of tools for its diagnosis. Miller is a professor of occupational and environmental medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. She also is assistant dean for the school's M.D.-M.P.H. program, and vice chair of community medicine in the school's Department of Family and Community Medicine.
Guy Richard Godfrey Mackarness was a British psychiatrist and low-carbohydrate diet writer. He is best known for his book Eat Fat and Grow Slim, published in 1958. Mackarness was an early advocate of the Paleolithic diet and authored books on food allergies.
Bernadette Eberlein is a dermatologist, allergologist, academic, and researcher. She is the Senior Physician of the private outpatient clinic, the Photodermatology unit, the unit for Soft X-Ray Therapy at Technical University of Munich.
