A Different Kind of Migraine

Hello, Friends,

I've just returned from an extremely uplifting trip, in theme, purpose, and goals (of beauty) achieved . . .  This joyful outcome shall forever stand on its own, bright and shining no matter what.

In the background, however, completely unrelated to the beautiful performances we were able to see, were noxious chemicals in use -- as they are in many public places -- in the hotel.*  This indoor contradiction to artistic beauty (which had been performed outdoors in the presence of peaceful nature) turned out to be a jarring one.

I was increasingly breathless and weakened when traversing the hotel stairs, which were heavily scented with a carpet cleaner or air deodorizer.  I avoided the elevator because it was frequented by smokers; and a chemically sensitive person does well not to risk spending extra minutes in a small, closed space with proximate irritants of cigarette odors and synthetic scents.  The air in the hotel room was clingy.  I felt strange and increasingly bad in a way I could not define.

I found out on the way home, experiencing what I can only call a slow, prolonged seizure of the abdominal organs.  This has happened to me before, following chemical exposures.  Arrested by sickening, thick, intense pains that bored into me from the back and the front, in different places at the same time, I couldn't rest my back against the seat of the car because it hurt so badly in the soft-tissue area of the kidneys.  I could barely inhale because something was gripping tight and painful in the area of the liver, on the right, and in the upper digestive tract on the left.  So for about six hours straight, I held myself at left-angle, then right-angle, away from the seat back, frozen in position waiting for the pain to abate, which it did not do until about eight hours had passed.  The pain slowly, slowly moved lower and lower, easing in the kidneys as I was finally able to drink some sips of water.  But the pain on the right side stayed longer, gnawing into me.  Now the active ache has stopped in the liver area, but that place feels like a raw wound.

I've had this happen about 10 times since around 2005.  It's always a long bout and just immobilizing.  I would have to call it a "migraine of the internal organs."  It's severe, comparable to a gallstone attack.  Having had the privilege of experiencing two gallstone attacks (one was confirmed with ultrasound -- the next one I simply survived), I can tell the difference.  The "migraine of the internal organs" is more "spread out," more pervasive; and the boring pain hits in places removed from the gallbladder's reverberating "range," or periphery.

The tender and deep kidney pain -- both sides -- has always been a curious effect of this peculiar form of migraine.  It always feels as though the kidneys had been directly impacted by something caustic and were crying out for help.

I interpret the whole syndrome as the body being completely filled up with toxins and everything suddenly being frozen in place -- "seized up," if you will.  Recovery begins with coaxing fluids into the body (one feels as though one will be sick and, under the strain, tends to forget whatever remedies one had), and it's a slow process.

I would like to reiterate that, although tissue inflammation and congestion certainly can and do result from one's experiences of chemical sensitivity, the "source pathway" of reactivity to chemicals is markedly different from a strictly immunological model (as with food/plant allergens).  Yes, inflammation results from chemical sensitivity (often tingling and/or feeling like a "burn," as well) -- and this can sometimes be seen, or even measured.  But the full pathway of a chemical toxin into the nerves and tissues is a neurologically intricate event which is mediated -- to the best of my knowledge -- through the brain and, as suggested elsewhere (and through my own experiences of reactivity to chemicals), also involving the eyes; and new means of measurement must be developed to track all of this in a commonly available way.

As a matter of great interest to me -- and perhaps to others -- I've just today come across a website which mentions the use of a retinal/ocular test to help measure the ins and outs of chemicals from the body.  This is the kind of test I'm speaking of when I say that new methods of tracking must be developed.  It's called the Functional Acuity Contrast Test.  The existence of such a test is an uplifting thought.:

The Functional Acuity Contrast Test (healingpartnership.com)

Wishing you clean, clear air -- Happy Autumn!

Cheers!

~ Daisies

*An American hotel in Richmond, Virginia.

"How It Works"

Hello, Friends,

A very tough challenge in conversing about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) lies in identifying and dispelling hidden layers of confusion about "how MCS works."

The consequences of hidden confusion in a conversation range from "minor" to "vast."

For instance, even amongst those who are extremely accepting and amenable to making environmental alterations for their chemically sensitive friends, there can be great gaps of crucial knowledge still waiting to be filled in.

When these gaps are finally "filled in" with the necessary information, this is a good thing, indeed -- but also, then, what have we lost in terms of time?  What if a particular piece of delayed knowledge had been critical to a friend's physical well-being -- perhaps the very answer to a health puzzle needing desperately to be solved?  Time lost, in such a case, is a very unfortunate thing.

Here, for example, is one potential layer of confusion:

"You can do a standard medical test for chemical sensitivities, just as you can do a standard medical allergy test for an allergy."  This errant assumption on the part of one's listener can go undetected for an extraordinarily long time.  You can converse with people for years about your own chemical sensitivity before they begin to realize that no one ever came along with a battery of tests to diagnose you -- and that no one is likely to come along with a battery of tests with which to alert and diagnose them . . . if they needed it.  

This means that another person, theoretically, can conclude, "Well, I'm not 'like you' with chemicals.  My doctor would have brought that to my attention.  Surely it would have come up somehow."

Not usually the case.  An acquaintance of mine was recently very surprised to learn from me that, no, she couldn't just go "get tested" for a reactivity to this or that chemical. 

Well, then again, you can . . . if you've got the time and the money to go to Harvard for a few brain scans or time-patterned EKGs.  But, otherwise, you can't -- in any commonly available way -- trace a chemical's course through the nervous system.  Not yet, anyway.  The environmental scientists, doctors, and researchers are working on it . . .

MCS doesn't operate as pure histamine reactions do.  Instead, it runs more of a neurological route.  They're working on constructing diagnostic tests to measure this type of a reaction, as opposed to the usual "IgE" measurements and such.

This means that figuring out patterns of reactions to various chemical products is all going to depend upon the tracking efforts of the affected individual.  And, no, most mainstream MDs won't be backing up MCS sufferers with confirmation of their MCS.  Increasingly, however, doctors are beginning to "take one's word for it."  This kindness doesn't remove the chemicals from their offices, but it's a goodwill beginning.

Then, there are a million possible layers of confusion underlying the global topic of stress:  Is stress alone causing one's bouts of physical distress, or could a regular chemical exposure possibly be the immediate root cause?  Furthermore, are the repeat bouts of the physical distress, one bout on top of another, causing major systemic stress and diminishing one's otherwise robust coping skills -- thereby adding stress to stress?

I remember vividly the month I tried to be extra healthy and eat lots of apples.  I was in "rest mode" after systemic exhaustion and overwork -- and this was the time for me to feel better and get strong.  Every single day, I ate two or three red apples and got a ferocious migraine.  Even without stress, I was becoming disabled by migraines.  I seriously wondered how much a body could take.  I was in a chemical-free environment -- why were things spiralling out of control?

Every day, I would get to that hideous "peak" of the migraine where one turns weak and green and the blood pressure feels like it's suddenly plummeting to the floor -- and then I would vomit.  It was a terrifying moment, every time.  My nervous system was going into veritable cataclysms which felt as though they could turn into full-blown seizures, or cause me to pass out.  Something bad.

Lo and behold, I came across some literature that described the various strengths of pesticides used on various "conventional" produce.  The apples were among those items getting the worst of it.

I switched to "organic apples only."  The bout of daily migraines stopped.  I ran into the same thing with raw, unpeeled peppers -- heavily sprayed.

And so I learned.

When I'd suspected cigarette smoke as my first antagonist, years earlier, I forced myself to sit in a restaurant about 10 feet away from a small group of men who were smoking.  I could feel the effects immediately but sat there for the duration.  By the time I was a passenger for the ride home, I was trapped in that cataclysm of pain all over again.  The migraine was fierce and getting worse by the minute.  I had my answer.  Let the doubters doubt:  I wouldn't be putting myself through that again.

So, I can be talking with people about reactions to chemicals, and they've already assumed they needn't consider this possibility for themselves.  Of course, not everyone will turn up with patterns of reactions to this or that chemical!  But it's a very sad thing to fail to ask the question, to fail to look thoroughly for potential, distinct patterns of reactivity, and to rest content with vague, imprecise, and/or random reasons for the repeat bouts of the physical distress they've been experiencing.

This reluctance to consider sensitivity to chemicals can lie in another source of confusion:  Incomplete knowledge of the pervasiveness of the chemicals, their potential effects on the body, and the many places in which one can be exposed to them.

Let's say, for example, that you work in a factory.  Perhaps you're not immediately reacting to the production of a given metal in that factory, but it's possible that you could be reacting to a cleaner used throughout the building, or in the restrooms.

Another layer of confusion could be lurking within this assumption:  "I've never reacted to 'x' before, so I'm not reacting to it now."  But sensitization often happens gradually.  There can come a time when you begin to react to something that never bothered you before.

As a little girl and as a teenager, I'd go to hair salons -- sometimes for hours at a time -- with my mother.  I'd wait for her to get her hair done -- and sometimes I'd get mine done.  People "did this" in those days.  What did we know?  The hair stylists also smoked on the premises . . .  Talk about a chemical cocktail.  During one of my last times in a hair salon, I got a permanent (it turned out so badly I wore a cap for months that year).  I'm talking major chemicals here.  Me.  The up-and-coming chemically sensitive one.  I didn't get any headaches back then from visiting hair salons.  Nothing happened.  But within a year following that permanent, cigarette smoke began to become a problem.   

Now, granted, my chemical sensitivity is improving -- but if I were to sit in a hair salon for that length of time today (or any length of time at all),  I might end up in an ambulance.  Sensitization takes time, but when it happens, it really happens.

In conclusion, whenever I'm speaking to someone about chemical sensitivity, I've learned now that I'd best check for hidden premises, and hidden assumptions about sensitization to chemicals, on the part of the other person.  If I don't mentally check for these, our conversation could be very polite and thoughtful but invisibly sidetracked by layers of confusion underneath -- two different paradigms of understanding in unrecognized conflict.

Writing this piece has been a challenge, especially since I'm still recovering from a migraine which occurred yesterday.  I'm quite "foggy."  I hope this post makes enough sense for a few points to be gleaned.

Cheers!

~ Daisies 

"Environmental" to the Core

Dear Friends,

In the world, today:

"Fukushima open air fission? Radiation surge can't be blamed on just random leaks" - RT News, 9/2/13; Christopher Busby, Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk

- Daisies