"Mystery Wheat"

Hello, Friends,

Following is a link to a CNN news video on genetically modified wheat found, mysteriously, in a farmer's field in Oregon.  The wheat was genetically modified by Monsanto corporation to resist the company's own herbicide, Roundup.

"Mystery Wheat Strikes Fear in Farmers" (June 17, 2013 - CNN)

Herbicide-treated and genetically modified seed . . .

A seedbed of inflammatory and neurological nightmares for many.

Chemical treatments and harmful alterations of foods increase both chemical sensitivity and systemic illness.  Here's hoping that this news link will spur on awareness of our need to protect our food supply, and to be extra-careful of what we ingest.

To your health --

Cheers!

~ Daisies
  

Murmuration (!) on Lough Derg (on Ireland's River Shannon)

Hello, Friends,

What's a "murmuration"?  If you don't know, don't feel bad.  I didn't know, either!  But now that I've seen one, I won't be forgetting it!

A "murmuration" is a flocking of starlings.  But don't let me ruin the surprise for you:  Just watch this spectacular footage, below, filmed on Lough Derg,* a lake of the River Shannon:

As they swooped and dipped and merged, the intersecting shapes of the starling formations, themselves, sometimes looked like the wing-spreading figures of large birds!

This is all part of the natural wonder of Ireland's River Shannon and her lakes, endangered national treasure and environmental mainstay of much of the country's wildlife, human life, cultural heritage, and economic livelihood.

Of particular interest to chemically sensitive individuals is the fact that Ireland led the world with its nationwide ban (2004) on smoking in workplaces and, as early as 1988, had already outlawed smoking in many public places.

What you've beheld in this video, above, is part and parcel of what Ireland's Shannon Protection Alliance is trying desperately to save from Dublin's potentially tragic interference.  Please see the links on the upper sidebar (top right) to help promote this environmentally worthy cause of saving the River Shannon.

I hope you've enjoyed the video!

Thank you for watching, and . . .

Cheers!

~ Daisies [Carolyn]

*FOOTNOTE August, 2014:  This video was brought to my attention by Mr. Gerry Siney.  Many thanks for the inspiration!  ~ Carolyn ["Daisies," above]

The Amazing Olive Leaf Extract

Hello, Friends,

During my walk outside this afternoon, I had an inspiration to publish the extensive health benefits of olive leaf extract.  I, myself, cannot list all of them, so I located a PDF file from the May 2001 Townsend Letter (which can be enlarged for better viewing) -- which does a splendid job of describing them:

Olive Leaf Extract as a Main Therapy in the Antimicrobial Supermarket - by Morton Walker, DPM

I can report this much from my own experience:

I am no longer a good candidate for antibiotic therapy.  I tend to get frightening amounts of arrhythmias when I take antibiotics.  Even a dentist had to tell me to discontinue the antibiotic after he'd pulled a tooth.  I followed up with other nutritional supplements at that time to keep infection at bay.

In recent years, however, I've been relying on the antibiotic-like properties of olive leaf extract when in perilous dental situations.  It's been amazing.  When there's been swelling due to an infection in the root, I've taken down the inflammation and held the infection at bay -- and prevented any resurgence of infection after the root canals.  Thanks to olive leaf extract, I've escaped the dentist-prescribed antibiotics before and after dental surgery numerous times now; and my healing has always been good.  I gave a supply of olive leaf extract capsules to a friend who had the beginnings of a dental abscess, and the capsules took the inflammation right down.  She didn't need the remainder of the capsules and offered them back to me.  I told her to keep them for another emergency!

Following is yet another dose of well-documented research on the extensive benefits of olive leaf extract:

The Amazing Olive Leaf - by Jeffrey Dach, MD 

And yet another, complete with a noteworthy list of sources on page 2:

Olive Leaf Extract (Discovery Health) - by the editors of PureHealth, MD* 

My own personal choice of olive leaf extract is as follows:

Seagate 450 mg Caps

I've taken between one and six capsules per day, when needed.  I've known others to take many more per day, up to 16 or 18 capsules per day for their Lyme disease.  [Please see medical note at bottom of blog.  Thank you.]

Perhaps olive leaf extract can become an effective part of your own health arsenal, as well.

Wishing you wellness -- 

Cheers!

~ Daisies

*NOTE of July 3, 2015:  The PureHealth, MD link seems to have disappeared.  In its place, I offer this link:  "Olive leaf extract" - by Dr. Ronald Hoffman (drhoffman.com)   ~ Carolyn ["Daisies," above]

Smiling Faces

Hello, Friends,

I thought I'd feature this special video on behalf of homeless people.  The activity in this video takes place in California, through the organization called Children Helping Poor and Homeless People (CHPHP).

Depending upon the degree of their ability to travel and withstand certain environmental conditions, some chemically sensitive homeless people in California may be able to access this assistance (see video), and some may not be able to.

Either way, the video is filled with such good feeling, such positive energy and real concern, I'm very happy to share it with you here.  May it add brightness to your day.

Cheers!

~ Daisies

A Toxin Is a Toxin

Hello, Friends,

For a long time now, I've had a deep concern for those whose immune systems are compromised -- whether or not they are also chemically sensitive.  I dedicate the following thoughts to them.

If one were to take a chemically sensitive person's anecdotal reports in good faith, one would quickly realize that the chemically sensitive person has, in effect, "done the work for you."  What work?  The work of sorting out and identifying which types of chemical antagonists can spiral the body into further and unnecessarily hastened destruction.

Those whose immune systems are already compromised need, in reality, to be just as careful as the chemically sensitive to avoid exposure to chemical toxins whenever possible.  If the chemical exposures of an immune-compromised person cannot be completely eliminated, the maxim would be, "Every little bit of avoidance helps."  Just as "Every extra chemical exposure can worsen things."  It may not worsen things to an immediately noticeable extent; but under the surface, the body knows that a toxin is a toxin, and it reacts accordingly.

We chemically sensitive individuals know, vividly and viscerally, how these chemical antagonists operate.  Their "ways and means" have been demonstrated upon our bodies again and again.  Everything that a non-chemically sensitive, immune-compromised person cannot feel happening to his body from chemical exposures, we can feel for him.

Furthermore, certain drug and chemical treatments can actually bring the body closer to a chemically sensitive state.  Of course, it is completely understood that this may be either medically unavoidable or water already "under the bridge."  But since this possibility for chemical sensitization, or increased physical vulnerability, is the inevitable risk of any treatment which includes the heavy use of antibiotics, antivirals, chemotherapy, or painkillers, it becomes all the more important for the treated person to try and minimize unnecessary chemical exposures.

The very last thing I mean to do here is lecture a person who is already exhausted.  So, please, take what you like and leave the rest, as they say. 

What I do mean to do, however, is offer the heartfelt support of the chemically sensitive community to those who may suffer differently from us, yet who also desperately need the knowledge we happen to have accumulated.  

As the saying goes:  What's ours is yours.  :)

Cheers!

~ Daisies

"Daisies" - Part III

Hello, friends,

Had a little piece of my chemical-exposure history returned to me today.  Someone happened to mention that a building in which I'd worked for two years had previously been a hair and nail salon just before our company leased office space there.  I then recalled that I once knew this and then forgot it.  The information wasn't even in my mind when I set up this blog!  Unfortunately, the heating ducts leading into that office space hadn't been cleaned before our company arrived there.  Upon discovery of much debris in the ducts, a heroic cleaning effort was made, not by the building's owner, but by the company for which I worked.  Even then, it was inevitable that there was still considerable debris remaining in the ducts; therefore, neither the irritating substances -- nor the chemical residues they left behind -- were completely eliminated.  No one even thought about addressing chemical residues back then.

What I can't forget is working many 12-hour days in that building, my eyes burning and burning; getting one migraine headache on top of another; drinking three large Dunkin' Donuts coffees a day to cope with the pain and inflammation; and a co-worker's smoking in the building.  By that point, I had fully established that cigarette smoke gave me migraines.  In those days, however, smoking indoors was still permitted, so I eventually had to ask the co-worker if she would please smoke outside.

So, after becoming fully sensitized to cigarette smoke, I actually worked long hours for two years in a very "sick" building where various forms of dusty debris and hair-and-nail-salon chemical residues were emanating from a forced-air heating system.  How about that?

There's more of an "excuse" for my chemically sensitive condition than even I thought . . .

It all fits together.

Cheers!

~ Daisies

Revised for clarity on 7/17/14.
 

Becoming Aware - Cigarettes

My first clue that something was wrong revolved around cigarettes.  For my out-of-country readers, I'm speaking here of American cigarettes.

For about seven years, I'd been socializing daily with chain smokers, sometimes with one chain smoker at a time, but even more often with groups, large and small, of chain smokers.  If we went to diners for refreshments together, I always ended up in the smoking section with them.  If I went to their homes, they smoked there, as well, indoors and outdoors.

I held my own but got frequent bouts of bronchitis and sore throats.  These didn't faze me.  I thought it was normal to get sick with that frequency, and in that way.

I had noticed, however, a few years before this, that if I sat in the cocktail section of a restaurant before dinner, by the bar where the most smoking took place (in those days), my eyebrows would get stiff and it became hard to move my eyes.  I didn't connect this occurrence to the word "inflammation" or to anything medical whatsoever.  I just wondered why my eyes would "get stuck" at such an inconvenient time.  I'd get all dressed up to go out, I'd arrive at a restaurant all smiling and happy, and my eyes would start to feel like cement.  Then my face would get stiff and it was physically hard to smile.  I thought it was a psychological thing.  A strange psychological thing.  I mean, how many people go to a psychoanalyst and say, "Hi.  I'm here because my eyes get stuck every time I socialize in the cocktail section of a restaurant"?

So this kind of thing had already been happening routinely, but what did I know or care about cigarette smoke?  I was young; I didn't smoke.  How could I be hurt by this? 

By the end of seven years spent near chain smokers, however, something happened to me one night while I was in the smoking section of a diner.  I got a horrible, horrible headache, so bad that I asked someone to take me to the hospital.  Up until then, my early 20s, I was a person who never got headaches.  

When we arrived at the emergency section of the hospital, the attending doctor seemed vague and baffled, and he offered me a strong painkilling drug.  I didn't take the drug.  I slumped outside and promptly threw up in the parking lot.  Surprise -- there was the cure.  That represented the end phase of the migraine.

I had to depart from every friend and acquaintance I knew, at that point, because they all smoked.  This was a social death.  I didn't know anybody else at that point, and it was getting nearly impossible to go out to restaurants or clubs or anything.  Finally, it was completely impossible.  This was before the anti-smoking laws took effect.

From there the chemical sensitivity mushroomed.  I was to get migraines from cigarette smoke and scented candles and an increasing amount of never-before-thought-of chemical scents.  I would get the migraines and throw up routinely for the next 10 years.  Then, at the 10-year point, the migraines took a new turn and the vomiting phase was eliminated.  This was a relief.  But the migraines still kept coming in reaction to more and more chemicals.

I would like to write, next time, about the difference I found, in 2007, between American cigarettes and French/European cigarettes. 

For now . . . 

Cheers!

~ Daisies [Carolyn]

Straining Toward the Sun

Greetings, Friends!

Sometimes the most positive, affirming thing one can do for a beleaguered population is to reach down deeply and acknowledge that core of very human pain. 

In solidarity with all of you chemically sensitive people who have ever felt the scourge of other people's incredulity, I've decided to share a poem of mine which expresses the torment of feeling disbelieved.

DISBELIEF

To feel disbelieved

cuts the words off at their roots --

thin, fragile branches

straining toward the sun,

only to be snapped off

by the wind . . .

phrases, perhaps raw with newness,

shocked by their own sound,

thrust into the tension and tumult

of audition

when there is

no show.

In memory of those toxically injured persons who have already succumbed to despair, and in the fervent hope of preventing more such deaths due to misunderstanding, abandonment, and hopelessness, I kindly refer you back to my earlier post, "A Time to Weep" (March 28, 2012).

Compassionate and respectful acknowledgment of this grim reality, now, by those of us who are still able to smile, can help prevent future tragedy. 

All the best to you in the new year -- 

Cheers! 

~ Daisies