INTERVIEW Staying Alive in Toxic Times: meet the doctor who says the modern world is making us ill MAIN AUTHOR PHOTO (c) Liz Seabrook Dr Jenny Goodman talks to Louise Wates about why she was driven to write a book on the chemicals that surround us, and how lifestyle can help to reduce their impact on health 16 OPTIMUM NUTRITION | SPRING <strong>2020</strong>
INTERVIEW F or those who haven’t seen the film Dark Waters, there is a scene in which the main protagonist Rob Bilot, played by Mark Ruffalo, is found ripping up carpets and throwing cooking pans into the rubbish — before his wife, played by Anne Hathaway, yells at him to stop. I shan’t ruin it with spoilers, but the film is based on the real-life story of lawyer Rob Bilot who spent two decades fighting one of America’s largest corporations over the dumping of toxic waste. It was roughly when I saw the film that I also spoke with Dr Jenny Goodman. A UK-based doctor who practises ‘ecological’ medicine, Goodman is a long way from Hollywood but her message isn’t too different from that of Dark Waters. Her book Staying Alive in Toxic Times: A Seasonal Guide to Lifelong Health lists and discusses the chemicals that surround us in everyday life. But unlike Dark Waters, she also tells us what we can do to lessen the damage. The ‘toxic overload’ debate — the concept that we live in a chemically-loaded environment that we didn’t evolve for — is a controversial one. Many experts argue that toxins are usually at ‘safe’ levels; for example, pesticide residues on food. The other side of the debate, however, is that those pesticide residues, added to all the other chemicals in our environment, create an unhealthy cocktail. Pollution from vehicles, chemicals in food packaging or plastic bottles, or cigarette smoke are well known examples. Goodman’s book includes many more, stating that these chemicals are making us — or some of us, at least — sick; triggering health problems including neurological disturbances, autoimmune conditions and cancer. Goodman and I speak on the phone. As we talk, she occasionally refers to academic studies so that I can check her facts. My impression is that she either has an excellent memory or is superfast at thumbing through lists of journal references. It’s also a reminder that despite the rather (in my opinion) ‘softly softly’ approach cover of her book, Goodman comes from a science background. She qualified as a doctor in 1982 but became disillusioned because medical training did not tell her how to help prevent disease. She writes that on the wards, the profession focused on suppressing symptoms “using a vast array of drugs”. (Goodman, p.2) In the 1990s, she discovered the British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) — a form of practice also known as functional medicine — where, she writes, she encountered other doctors who were also disillusioned with dishing out drugs. Joining BSEM, she says, meant rethinking some of her training. “I had an awful lot to unlearn. I was to some extent still in the conventional mode. I thought purely in diagnostic terms — you’ve got disease X or you haven’t,” she says. “And if your symptoms don’t fit any pattern in my textbook then you haven’t got a disease, ergo you must be well. Of course, we know that isn’t the case. We know there is a vast spectrum between health and [a named] illness.” Many people can be quite ill, she says, but with symptoms that haven’t quite made it into the textbooks. She says she also had to unlearn the notion of aetiology. “In medical textbooks, under each disease there is a section called ‘aetiology’ which means ‘cause’. It’s always a very small section. “I had to learn that what conventional medicine gives as a cause — which is what is happening in the tissues, in the cells — is a mechanism, not the cause.” Another difference between conventional medicine and how she practises, she says, is that rather than saying nothing is wrong, because the patient’s symptoms don’t fit into a textbook, she will say ‘I don’t know what is wrong’ before investigating. Much of Goodman’s approach involves nutrition because, she explains, many chemicals “push” nutrients out of the system. However, nutrition as medicine is not largely accepted by the wider medical ...toxins are driving... diseases including: “Acne, addictions, ADHD, allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, autism and ASD, auto-immune diseases, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, dementia, depression, diabetes, eczema, endometriosis, fertility problems, fibroids, hay fever, heart disease, hyperactivity, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, period problems and PMS, polycystic ovaries, stroke, thyroid problems” “The gastroenterologist who — if you pardon the pun — poo pooed the idea of the microbiome is probably dishing out probiotics on the NHS” profession, and it is unlikely that many of us would get similar information from our GPs. This, she says, is because conventional medicine is “slow to catch up”. In her book there is the example of a gastroenterologist who, about six years ago, told a patient that food made no difference to the state of their gut. “The gastroenterologist who — if you pardon the pun — poo pooed the idea of the microbiome is probably dishing out probiotics on the NHS in the six years since that comment was made,” she says. “[Medical understanding is] changing rapidly but of course myself and my colleagues will never ever get the credit, because once the mainstream knows it, it’s like they always knew it.” Generally, it appears that GPs are nonplussed when she works with their patients. Asked how they respond to her recommendations, she replies: “On the whole just blank. Research that is known about in the academic sphere does take time to trickle down to the clinical world.” She mentions small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and leaky gut (intestinal hyperpermeability) as two examples that have only recently entered into the consciousness of conventional medicine. Where Goodman and like-minded practitioners continue to stand apart from conventional accepted wisdom is on the belief that environmental toxins are driving growing rates of modern diseases including: “Acne, addictions, ADHD, allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, autism and ASD, auto-immune diseases, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, dementia, depression, diabetes, eczema, endometriosis, fertility problems, fibroids, hay fever, heart disease, hyperactivity, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, period problems and PMS, polycystic ovaries, stroke, thyroid problems.” These diseases, she writes are “21st century plagues, which were rare or unknown before the industrial revolution. They are not inevitable and they are not primarily about ageing.” (Goodman, p.8) The fact we are living longer, she believes, is not to blame. “There’s a lack of logic in the argument that says thanks to the wonders of modern medicine we’re now living long enough to get hideous diseases,” she says. “Alzheimer described what he called pre-senile dementia. His first patient was 51. In your nineties you’re going to forget people’s names, but in SPRING <strong>2020</strong> | OPTIMUM NUTRITION 17
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