My Nutritional Recourse During and After a Reaction to Chemicals

Feeling unusually "clear" today, I'm about to sail into the sunset of an activity bursting with scented clothing and perfumes.

Before I head off, I wanted to make a note about some methods I used this past week to recover from a severe bout of MCS . . . and then to regain my energy, which sunk once again to an abysmal low.

I took to grating cloves of garlic on my trusty cheese grater.  I sprinkle this fragmented mixture on my vegetables, salads, etc.  This does wonders for detoxification after contamination and for energy rebuilding.  But first, in the throes of a dreadful reaction, I had to use liquids as my "food" because the back of my head swelled up internally, making jaw and facial movements nearly impossible.  Swallowing, too, was labored.  The more I drank liquids with the additions noted, below, the more the reaction lessened to the point that I could actually chew food.

Highly recommended is apple cider vinegar, from one tablespoon on up (to tolerance), added to water or seltzer with generous spritzes of (real) lemon juice and a tablespoon or so of raw, unfiltered honey.

Dandelion tea with spritzes of (real) lemon helped, also, along with adding raw, cut onions to my food when I was finally able to chew.

Green tea is anti-inflammatory and was a steppingstone to imbibing the other liquids.

I drank, drank, drank, said fluids (to tolerance) accompanied, when finally possible, with the food additions suggested above.

This is very cut-and-dry reporting, but I'm supposed to be getting ready now and I didn't want to neglect some potentially helpful suggestions for those facing a new weekend of socializing and, therefore, chemicals.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Getting Sick at the Doctor's

Good evening!

Busy day today, so I'm writing at the end instead of the beginning.

I'm often asked why I don't visit mainstream medical specialists (allergists being at the top of the list) to treat my MCS, and why I don't get a catheter ablation to remedy my supraventricular tachycardia.  My answers to both questions are connected by a common thread.

Firstly, I don't visit mainstream allergists to treat my MCS because MCS is not an allergy.  An allergy is an overreaction of the body to a natural substance.  MCS is a systemic reaction to an actual toxin, a poisonous chemical element. 

Secondly, I try very hard to avoid mainstream medical offices.  Many toxic chemical elements are rampant in the typical mainstream medical office.  

A few sniffles?  Nothing, to me.  Sinus congestion, all by itself?  A joy compared to a migraine.  Watery eyes? This passes.  Uncomfortable, like a fly on the nose.  But nothing catastrophic.

The real trouble comes when, to take one example, acerbic, peppery, sharp, burning laundry fragrance on someone's clothes wafts to this angle and that angle, radiating outward, filling rooms, catching breezes . . . . .

I focus on "getting through."  I sit through the gathering haze of mind and body, that intangible "fuzz" that thickens around attempts at motion and cognition, telling myself it will only be one or two more days like this, trying to stay alert while feeling more and more drugged, face and nose burning red hot . . . plus another fairly frequent and perilous-feeling reaction involving multiple disturbances of my heart rhythm.

However, when one is so busy coping with simple consciousness, with the "how to's" of staying alert and alive, there is simply no room for the kind of reflection that could usher in phobias and existential terror.  Better said, there is just no spare energy for it.  All of my energy, frankly, goes into not being snuffed out.

Now imagine the absurdity of going into an ear/nose/throat specialist's office, sitting in the waiting room, and feeling a distinct "puff" of strong irritant fragrance with thickness and texture rise literally into your nose.  This once happened to me.  I was there to get some ear wax removed.  A very inane and finite job.  Neat and clean.  In and out.  I felt fine and balanced when I arrived.  Then, the fragrance puffed . . . from somewhere.  Somewhere close.  I looked around like a spy, e.g, trying to look as though I were not looking. Because I could see no surreptitious mini-aerosols poking out of clenched hands or purses, I sat there debating with myself instead of doing what I should have done:  Move immediately.  Every few minutes of intense exposure to a formidable trigger toxin can rack up an entire new day of suffering.

After a few minutes of cluelessness, I finally moved my seat. As I glanced around absentmindedly, my eyes happened to settle upon the culprit.  A pink plug-in air freshener just below my old seat!  The pain had well begun above my nose by then, the deep, thick fog and swollen feeling had already "moved in," my face was heating up.  I felt as though I'd been both hit in the head and treated with a narcotic.  I felt . . . injured.

I told the ear doctor about it when he took me into his office, stating simply that plug-ins can give his patients migraines and sinus trouble, as I now had from his plug-in.  He said something to the effect of a quick "Oh."  To his credit (or someone else's), there was no plug-in apparent by sight or by scent the next time I visited that office.

However, on the day that I was thus afflicted by the puff of the plug-in, it was very hard to drive home.  The nerves behind my eyes were vibrating with the familiar pulse of a chemical reaction, and my vision was literally shaking.  I saw the "whole picture" before my windshield, but various pieces of the picture were wobbling by the millisecond at different levels, each piece somewhat "out of line."  I felt sideways, crooked in my seat, as though I were tilting.  So I tilted my head to compensate.  I drove home with my head tilted in order to straighten out my eyes.  My face, nose, and jawline were cloaked in red by the time I arrived home, migraine headache well underway.  I'd been cooked.  My husband, seeing the damage, was incensed on my behalf. 

This from visiting the office of an ear/nose/throat specialist, of all things!  (So, why don't I go to mainstream medical specialists unless I absolutely have to???)

When patients are incidentally subjected to plug-ins and equivalent deodorizing/cleaning toxins in doctors' offices, when the medical establishment fails to disseminate essential information about the severe damage these items can do when implanted near human beings, uninformed patients will return "ad infinitum" to chemically contaminated offices for more and more medication and one surgical intervention on top of another.

Those patients who are directly affected by these chemicals might actually believe it's a mighty handy thing to be experiencing their primary inflammation, coincidentally, at the exact time they have to explain their symptoms to the doctor.  If patients only knew the types of neurotoxic chemicals that were either assisting or frankly causing their misery -- both in the medical offices and in their own homes and workplaces!

If more doctors only knew . . . .  If more doctors only cared to know . . . . . .  If  institutions of higher learning would actually dispense the necessary information about neurotoxic and carcinogenic chemicals to medical students . . . . . .  If medical offices would only be constructed with truly "green" materials . . . . .

Then, medical offices -- as well as hospitals and operating rooms -- wouldn't also have such potential to bring on heartbeat irregularities in susceptible individuals.

More on that topic . . . tomorrow.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

MCS -- What It's Like

A good Sunday morning to you!

For those of you who are just learning about chemical sensitivity, I'll share the experience with you "from the inside."  For those of you who know only too well the gist of what I'm about to share, I'll share it to affirm my kinship with you.  Not everyone's reactions will be identical, of course, but there is a certain "flavor" to the overall picture of MCS reactivity that will invariably be similar -- I would expect this similarity to occur most noticeably along the lines of "central nervous system" effects. In my own experience, these seem to predominate.

Sure does make you wonder about all of those neurological disorders that crop up as people "age."  Especially the wild-card ones such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS) that can devastate seemingly out of the blue.  I once read in some studies (I'll try to look these up again) that MS is made worse by exposure to natural gas appliances.

Sundays and holidays are particularly difficult days, from a synthetic-chemical point of view.  Churches are redolent with airborne, molecular bouquets of scented personal products, from hair gels to shampoo, aftershave to men's cologne, women's fragrances to scented lotions, body washes, laundry-scented clothing and the residue of mothball treatments and cigarette smoke -- you name it.  These details, which are small or barely noticeable to many other people, loom very large when you have a nose like a bloodhound.

Many churches, also, are both upholstered and carpeted, and the windows are not always designed to be opened.  In the winter, forced-air heating systems spread around the conglomeration of contaminants while drying out the mucous membranes.

On holidays, there are usually more people present in church than usual; and some of those people inevitably smoke cigarettes uncomfortably close to entrances and exits.  If the weather is warm and the doors and windows of church halls are left open, the smoke wafts in.

Then, moving on to "visiting."  Apartment complexes and close suburban neighborhoods exude synthetic laundry fragrance through the dryer vents, which often pours out into the streets and blankets entire blocks.

Inside homes there are air fresheners, synthetically scented paraffin candles, potpourri, scented soaps and lotions, chemical cleaners, carpets, carpet-shampoo treatments, items laundered with synthetically scented products, and upholstered furniture and curtains which have absorbed all of these scents combined.  Add to that the natural gas stoves and other natural-gas appliances present in many dwellings, and you have "chemical soup" permeating the air with neurotoxins (nerve toxins) galore.

For a day or two (sometimes three) after back-to-back, multiple exposures to these neurotoxic chemicals, my center of balance is off and I feel as though I'm walking on an undulating ship; my muscular movements require deliberation as opposed to effortless execution; and I feel as though I'm moving through quicksand from head to toe.  My thoughts are slowed, my mood becomes somber; thinking sequences through, step-by-step, becomes a huge labor; the glands around my throat swell, my sinuses swell, my chin gets red, my nose burns and turns red, and I get some hives along the jawline.  Two or three days later, this impending migraine -- truly a central nervous system event -- really heats up:  The pain begins to pulse noticeably through my head as the tissue and glands around it swell up, both tightening my jaw and making it difficult to swallow.  The migraine syndrome is now going full-force.  If I haven't taken ibuprofen yet, it's absolutely necessary now.

At the same time, I try to hurry along my recovery with dandelion root tea, green tea, rooibos tea, apple-cider vinegar, Buffered C Powder, magnesium malate -- and other foods and supplements that offer liver cleansing, digestive assistance (this deteriorates during chemical reactions/migraines, worsening the toxic load), antioxidant help, and calming of the nerves.

I've also made a mental note to try and "put off" addressing any potentially sensitive interactions with people until the mood-dampening effect of the chemical reaction passes.

Things look and feel so tremendously different once my body has reasonably (not perfectly, but reasonably) detoxed from a walloping chemical exposure!

This return feeling of well-being is what I wish for all of you, as often as possible -- and especially on weekends and holidays!

Please write in your own experiences and solutions you've come up with to cope with acute exposures to aggravating chemicals. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Cheers!

~ Carolyn