Managing Environmental Sensitivity: An Overview Illustrated with a Case Report (Report‪)‬

Introduction Environmental sensitivity is an acquired condition attributed to low-level, normally well-tolerated, environmental exposures. (1,2) Experts have advocated many terms for the resulting illness (Table 1), and in 1996 a World Health Organization workshop recommended adopting the term Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance to denote the substantial overlap between these labels. (3) Despite limited biomedical evidence to support its underlying causal inferences, (3-10) environmental sensitivity has become a commonly-assigned syndrome. Individuals so labeled are high consumers of healthcare resources--particularly complementary and alternative therapies including chiropractic. In Gibson et al.'s recent survey of patients with environmental sensitivity, 54% (498 of 917) had engaged with a chiropractor. (11) Given the high use of chiropractic by patients with environmental sensitivity we feel that chiropractors should be apprised on this topic.