Foot Neuropathy from Inhaled Chemical Toxins?

 Dear Friends,

Through my many gluten and sugar dietary failures this past week, the perfect testing ground emerged: The only thing I succeeded in avoiding over the past week was exposure to the active burning of incense in the Roman Catholic church I've been attending. The result has been amazing: I can almost entirely feel all of my toes and can wiggle them easily!

I have always had no physical reactions to the brands of incense burned in Armenian and Middle Eastern churches. On the purely physical level: These parishes have seemed to use more organic brands of incense from the Middle East. On the spiritual level: I am a member of the Armenian Catholic Rite. Ever since I became a member in 1994, my soul has been nurtured and formed in this Eastern rite. Both the physical and spiritual realities may now be converging here to reveal that God is urging me to return to attendance at Mass in the Armenian liturgy. It is known that God permits difficulties with diet and/or physical environment to help people realize when they should leave those places and seek harmonious livelihood elsewhere.

Regarding my diabetes, MCS, and foot neuropathy, this experiment also revealed something amazing: My severe foot neuropathy appears to have been either caused or greatly worsened by impure, chemically infiltrated brands of church incense inhaled by me at weekday and/or weekday-evening special church services at the Roman Catholic church I've been attending! I avoided, this past week, being in the church during or directly after those services which included the burning of incense. At Sunday Mass there -- which I did attend last week -- no incense is burned. I ingested both generous amounts of gluten and generous amounts of sugar during this time. In summary: My foot neuropathy correlates less with my diabetes and gluten problem and more with my exposure to the burning of impure, chemically infiltrated incense (and, likely, also, to my exposure to those chemical-laundry-product fragrances which I also succeeded in avoiding this past week)!

So ... my foot neuropathy seems much more related to my incidental inhaling of chemical scents than to my diabetes or my gluten ingestion. 

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Nerve Toxins and Neuropathy: Perfect Together

Dear Friends,

I urge you to go back to my very first posts on this hard-work-filled blog of mine. This blog has been a true labor of "sweat and suffering," combined with hours and hours of detailed research over the years. My earliest posts (from 2011 through 2014) articulate my precise reasons for beginning this blog: Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) and a thorough defense of its reality.

I, myself, have had MCS for several decades now. In the 1990s, I charted my symptoms/environmental circumstances and finally came to a full realization of the very real patterns of my body's reactivity to common chemicals all around me. In my attempts to explain this to others and help myself, I was met consistently with laughing disbelief, annoyance, and even, at times, rage from other people. Hurt and seemingly discredited by this disbelief wherever I requested helpful omissions of chemical products (so that I could function there), I resolved to "answer back" every possible disbelieving reaction I could recall ... with this blog. And so I did (posts 2011 through 2014).

Following herbal treatment for Lyme disease in 2013, I noticed, by 2014, a dramatic lessening of my MCS reactivity. I have been reminded this past month, however, that my MCS is still active to a noteworthy degree and that I must withdraw from my various recent common-chemical exposures in order to detox seriously once again.

To refresh for those who have not been following along: I struggle with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), (autoimmune) antibody production in response to gluten ingestion, and Type II diabetes. I have found, over the past two to three years, that my toes (and the toes of one foot much more than the other) have been (1) increasingly icy-cold, frostbitten-feeling, alternating with a red-hot feeling of burning; (2) swollen and clunky-feeling; (3) pins-and-needles-feeling with spikes of sharp nerve pain; and (4) largely numb.

With my "gold-star" alternative/orthomolecular MD having retired during COVID, and with my having no medical insurance for several years now, I've been dealing with my diabetes and gluten problem on and off as poverty's varying diet permits.

I am writing again now, after a long hiatus, due to an observation of mine this afternoon which suddenly became clear enough to stun me. I'd been obscurely witnessing this phenomenon over and over, perhaps for the past few years or so, without my having pulled it out of my brain fog for actual inspection. 

My "toes" trouble, as noted above, began and dramatically worsened over the past two or three years. (My blood-glucose readings, for the most part, have consistently been way "over the top" during the past eight years, since 2015 when I was diagnosed.) I have been focusing for the past several days, however, on detoxing from a multiplicity of aggravating common chemicals in the church I've been attending. How long have I been attending this church? Since late 2019. A time period of ... a little over three years. Aha!

While I have been ignoring my high blood sugar (because my physical distress from chemicals lately has been so severe that I cannot work on that problem, the gluten problem, and the diabetes at the same time), I have been eating, all weekend through today, strawberry nonfat yogurt which contains a good amount of sugar. Unbelievably, however, my toes feel so much better today, after two days away from the church interior which absorbs (when reasonably filled with attendees) the multiplicity of chemical scents! Is this "toes" problem of mine due to "diabetic" neuropathy, or is it really due to -- and severely worsened by -- excessive chemical-scent exposures at my under-ventilated church each week after week for the past three or so years? Moreover, so many times this past year, I've noted to my husband that my toes flare up on Sunday evenings after Sunday Mass in the mornings, and in the evening when I've occasionally visited a hospital or nursing home earlier in the day. You know what's in hospitals and nursing homes: innumerable applications of disinfectants!

Therefore, I am putting these novel questions of mine "out there" today:

1) Might what is called "diabetic" neuropathy be caused and worsened not by sugar consumption and/or high blood glucose, but by exposures to common chemicals (many containing nerve toxins) in the home or outside environment?

2) Might diabetes, itself, in some cases, be caused by exposures to common chemicals containing nerve toxins?

[Common-chemical/nerve-toxin considerations: strong chemical laundry scents in homes, on clothes, and from dryer vents to lawns/yards; chemical-/petroleum-based perfumes, colognes, hair products, soaps, deodorants, aftershave, scented candles, essential oils, potpourri, incense, and cleaners; indoor and outdoor pesticides; smoking and secondhand smoke; public-building/hospital/nursing home/rehab/hospice/doctor's office chemical cleaners and disinfectants; and public/medical restroom cleaners, disinfectants, plug-ins, and aerosol deodorizers, etc.]

3) En route to answering Questions #1 and #2, has the following ever been investigated and documented (?): Are those with diabetes and "diabetic" neuropathy also subject to excessive chemical products in their environment, and/or have these individuals become sensitized to multiple chemicals -- meaning, do they have undiagnosed MCS ?

This could be a fatal omission of necessary awareness and diagnosis in mainstream medicine. 

~ Carolyn