Toxins? Syndromes? I'm starting a campaign for reckless abandon

Noseblind, it emerges, is when you become used to a scent in your home and the receptors on your olfactory epithelium cease to register the smell.

This might lead to dreadful situations where you think your home wafts scents of blue agava and cassis when to your guests it honks of wet dog.

It’s a trick as old as time for advertisers to create a problem and offer the solution – for a fee. Get that, yup. But are we not wise to it yet? No, we're getting worse.

Every time I pick up a women’s magazine, it asks me if I think I have some heretofore unknown disorder. Never do I read these and think, “Yes! Yes, finally a cure.” It’s rarely ever useful or likely information.

Last month’s Glamour magazine asked if I have ringxiety. This is from a study by the University of Michigan, which delves into the modern malaise of hearing phantom calls and text messages. This is caused by a psychological phenomenon scientists have named "ringxiety".

I have never previously believed my phone to be ringing when it was not. Now, thank to the power of suggestion, I hear my phone ringing all the time.

From the ridiculous to the concerning: Tired All The Time, Fear Of Missing Out, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Female Sexual Dysfunction, Night Eating Syndrome, you can have them all.

The cure for Night Eating Syndrome is a chunk of cheese before bed. Of course, then you end up with a serious case of lactosomnia.

There was a lady on BBC Radio Scotland this week talking about how she formerly would eat only fried chicken but is now "cured" thanks to a hypnotherapist. “I didn’t know it was a thing, a disorder, until I went to the hypnotherapist”. Maybe because it wasn't a disorder?

Everything needs a name - picky eating is a disorder. Those who like clean hands or a neat desk boast of obsessive compulsive disorder when those who are really suffering from the illness would give anything not to have it.

I was just reading about the perils of fluorinated chemicals - these are supposedly in your saucepans, your clothes and your skincare. Says the women's magazine scientist, they carry risks of high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, and testicular and kidney cancer, to name a few. And so the organic trade, for the worried well, booms.

Which brings us to the food allergies. Lactose intolerance and Coeliac disease are nasty, limiting things. You wouldn't have them if you could choose. But it's become fashionable to have a food allergy.

Everyone worth their salt has some sort of illness they'd never confess was self-imposed.

But how to admit to good health when danger is perceived everywhere? The onslaught of toxins, the perils of heavy metals, the hundreds of diets on offer all promising different miracles.

Example: the book Medical Medium claims toxins are ruining our lives. But we can reverse the damage by eating the algae Spirulina, preferably from Hawaii, and wild blueberries, but only from Maine, plus taking regular infrared saunas. Maybe it's true, but who's got the time? Or the money. Some must. This tome is a New York Times bestseller.

I know folk who fear toxins in cling film and household paint. Then there are otherwise sensible people who won't vaccinate their children. And another who gives their kid an asthma inhaler "just in case".

Most of us are, health-wise, really damn lucky.

Instead of being pleased with a lifetime where rickets and scurvy are unlikely, we're inventing ills for ourselves instead of enjoying it.

Maybe people are bored. Maybe they are are so harassed and busy that they're desperate for a cure. But because there's nothing really wrong in the first place, they need a fake-illness to justify buying the corresponding snake oil.

It's sad times when daring amounts to eating non-organic carrots from a cling film wrapper. I'm leading the charge for reckless abandon - egg yolks, Teflon pans and as many heavy metals as you can imagine.

Put aside your anxiety, your food allergy and your disorder and join me.