REPRINT: Cardiac Arrhythmias in the MCS Picture (originally posted 5/19/11)

Hello, Friends,

This is a reprint of a piece I wrote in May, 2011.  I'm reprinting it today due to some blog feedback which indicates reader interest in the topic of PVC's (premature ventricular contractions):  

Happy Hazy, Sunny Day!

Well, I'm back in the saddle again after much more chemical reactivity than I'd bargained for.

The rain has ended and the sun is shining -- literally! 

Now, cardiac arrhythmias -- how do they fit into the picture of chemical reactivity?  I'm not sure precisely how, except to speculate that the neurotoxins in the aggravating chemicals might stimulate the nerves electrically, which would include the heart nerve.  I just know that, for me, they are now part of the MCS picture.

I had been diagnosed with benign arrhythmias as a child -- what they now call "supraventricular tachycardia" (SVT).  I was treated, at that time, with tiny doses of daily phenobarbital and digitalis.  After a few years, the arrhythmias went dormant.  For decades.  Until the MCS came into bloom.

Let it be stated firmly that I am not a medical professional and can proffer neither diagnoses nor the science behind the symptoms.  I leave that to more capable minds.  What I can provide here, however, is anecdotal background into which a better mind can one day "splice in" the exact reasons for these physical symptoms.

Sometimes right away during an exposure to aggravating chemicals, or sometimes a day or two later, I will experience a multitude of "premature ventricular contractions" (PVC's).  These feel like little drum rolls of the heart or, at other times, an abrupt and hard "thud" as though the heart "fell" downward, or jumped upward!  These "thuds" cause me to gasp involuntarily.  At their worst, the PVC's keep coming and turn into an extended bout of SVT.  This is a racing of the heart so fast and so hard that you can see the person's shirt bobbing up and down over the heart.  Mine has reached over 200 beats per minute for extended periods of time, as in three hours.  My chest and back, at these times, experience a sickening ache, and I feel lightheaded.  A person cannot go on like this indefinitely.  My last bout caused the need for a visit to the emergency room for 2 shots of adenosine, a heart-stopping drug which resets the rhythm.

At other times, the heart will just launch into radical, fast SVT within a split second, as though someone simply flipped a switch inside of me.  If I cannot cough hard enough or bear down effectively enough (two techniques for stopping an arrhythmia in its tracks), then "we're off to the races" and I'm in a bad place, praying for the heart to stop "galloping" on its own.     

The PVC's occur most, and a multiplicity of times for one or two days at a time, during or following such things as heavy scented-laundry exposure, visits to mainstream medical offices (dental offices being the worst for me), and typical office buildings.

Also worth mentioning here, for the sake of completeness and accuracy, is the tendency for gluten to do the same thing to my heart.  Because there is a known "toxic fraction" of the gluten molecule which acts as an inflammatory agent for those sensitive to gluten, the gluten molecule becomes, for me, one more "chemical agent" in the reactivity picture.  My first symptoms of gluten sensitivity were, in fact, neurological.  I'd get wobbly, somewhat dizzy, following the ingestion of wheat bread.  I'd eat the bread and then find myself leaning against the wall for balance.  There was the frightening day when I was eating wheat bread in the car, while driving.  The PVC's began, making me gasp every other second.  I also felt that dizzy, lightheaded sensation.  A person cannot drive this way.  I had to stop the car and sit, just hoping for it all to pass.  I wondered about the wheat bread.

I took a baseline blood test for gluten sensitivity, which showed, at that time, a "moderate" level of antibodies to gluten in my blood.  I was advised to stay away from gluten at that point, or at least to limit it as best I could.  (I do understand that known celiacs must stay away from every single molecule of gluten.  I understand, also, that I might actually be a full-blown celiac which might be more obvious at this point if I pursued further testing.  Then again, there may be some people who are neurologically sensitive to gluten without having celiac disease.  The neurological angle of gluten sensitivity is now beginning to be explored.)

So gluten, for some of us, can act as "one more chemical" -- an actual toxin -- precipitating our symptoms. 

Now back to neurotoxins, in general, as they often precede or coincide with my own PVC's:

My greatest concern, therefore, comes for those cardiac patients, elderly patients, and all neurologically compromised patients who most visit mainstream medical offices.  As I've noted in a previous post, mainstream offices and most public buildings contain innumerable neurotoxins in the form of chemical disinfectants, air-freshening products, the synthetic scents that exude from each person, plus upholstery and carpeting which absorb and "breathe back" all of the above . . . etc.

For me, it is highly likely that if I had to visit a cardiologist or any medical professional regularly, I would be living with nearly continual episodes of PVC's!

So what is the case, I wonder, for frail elderly patients whose hearts are worn down, to begin with . . . whose brains and nervous systems are more susceptible to damage by everything they eat and breathe?  Do many cardiac patients actually get worse upon more frequent visits to the cardiologists' offices?

It surely makes me wonder.

Stay as well as you can, and cheers!

~ Carolyn

Grass Cleaners and Deodorized Eggs

I began to wonder, the other night, if people are now cleaning their grass with lemon-scented ammonia. 

It was a clear, moonlit eve and my husband had just purchased a used lawnmower from a resident of an impeccably lovely home, lawn freshly tended.*  As my husband re-entered the car after loading the lawnmower in the back, I smelled a pungent chemical, lemony smell.  Preparing to stick my nose out the window for the entire ride home, I exclaimed to my husband, "You've got the smell of a cleaner all over you!"  To which he replied, "It's not me -- that smell was all over, outside.  It still is."

It was a difficult call.  My sense of smell, initially strong, was now somewhat masked by the chemical.  Perhaps the air outside really did sting of the strange scent.  For a few moments as we drove out of the neighborhood, the peculiar scent seemed to be "out there."  How very odd.

"Oh," I lamented, "where can I find air that smells of air?"

As we drove further, the chemical lemony smell seemed to emanate from the back of the car.  I thought about the grass-catcher on the mower, and my wheels started turning.  What, exactly, was on that mower?

Having been so long away from lawn treatments, I no longer know what the scent of one would be -- except for the most rudimentary fertilizers.  When we returned home, however, the hair of another family member [our little girl] who'd been sitting in the back passenger seat now smelled of the lemony chemical.

Then, yesterday, when I was preparing to make a three-egg omelet, I opened the plastic egg carton and was greeted by that synthetic "air-freshener" smell.  To my surprise, this time the chemical smell had nearly escaped the plastic carton.  It was actually on the eggs.  "Oh," I thought, "now they have 'deodorized eggs'?"  

For what it was worth, I rinsed the pretty brown "farm-fresh," "cage-free," "omega-3" eggs in cool tap water from our well.  I then rubbed them with paper towels (these, fortunately, were scent-free).  Some of the scent diminished.  We did eat them.  

But it all causes one to wonder.

While scrambling the perfumed eggs, I had tried to navigate my footwork with some grace and charm as a migraine headache came out of hiding.  The previous day, I'd walked my children into the children's section of a library.  I'd backed right out again.  An acerbic chemical scent was present in the air.  My nose turned red, and the redness began to spread to my chin and face.  Then came the hives on my arms -- the usual routine when there's an air freshener and/or strong cleaning products have been used in a room.

All of which left me feeling an externally invisible but internally experienced difficulty with balance and walking yesterday.  These types of recovery days involve a kind of "thinking about walking" on my part in order to make walking happen properly.  It all feels remarkably like when I was put on codeine after an operation to mask the pain:  a frankly drugged feeling in which all planned physical impulses feel like sludge and words almost slur. 

So, thinking hard about walking from the table to the stove and back again, I prepared our fragranced eggs. 

There's no use crying about it.  Sometimes, I'd just rather laugh.  There will be no perfection on this earth while I write this blog and advocate for air purification in every venue.  Of course I know this.  And I even accept it.  

There will be those days when I feel as though I'm walking on a rocking ship, when my brain pounds nearly out of my skull, when my face is outlined in choleric red and hives sprout in patches . . .

Until, that is, the law banishes synthetic air fresheners, synthetically scented paraffin candles, toxins in synthetic laundry and cleaning products, and lawn chemicals -- among a multitude of other things.

Just one more reminder from one more little voice on the planet. 

Aside from that, I wish you "Cheers!"

~ Carolyn

*[Note of 9/10/15:  This strange scent experience of our family of four took place in upper Northwest NJ, in Sussex County.]
  

Words of Gold

Hello, friends,

Recently I've been marveling, with tremendous gratitude, at the ability of certain medical professionals who do not have toxic injury to "get in the shoes of" those who do.  When these doctors explain toxic injury/MCS to people in recorded interviews, they succeed perfectly in capturing the nuances of that peculiar new sensitivity to chemical odors experienced by the toxically injured.  These doctors are careful to note, for the listening public, that this is not a mere matter of "disliking" or of "being bothered by" chemical odors.  They explain that it is rather a matter of our reacting "physically unpleasantly" and "becoming symptomatic."

To experience these quotes in the context in which they were made, please view the following video or read the accompany transcript (which seems to contain less text than quoted in the video):  "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Short Introduction" (provided by The Chemical Sensitivity Foundation).

These words of concrete understanding, at the medical level, are gold to a person who's been toxically injured. 

It is precisely this type of "in your shoes" understanding that I hope to promote through this blog.  Only those who understand the true nature of this affliction will be in a position to warn the toxically injured to avoid, whenever possible, further exposures to "irritant chemicals" -- to avoid an escalation of symptoms, permanent physical damage, and the spreading of their chemical reactivity to other chemicals.

Here I need to return briefly to a very fine and critical point:  I mentioned, a few essays back ("A Difficult Topic"), the claims of some toxically injured people to have succeeded in desensitizing themselves to most significant chemical reactions by channeling new thought patterns through particular parts of their brains.  If a toxically injured person is truly healed through this type of treatment or by a thorough process of physical detoxification (as per the protocols at the William Rea center in Texas and other centers which implement detoxification), that is one thing.  For those who are not healed of their chemical sensitivity and are still symptomatic, avoidance of further exposures to irritant chemicals (to whatever extent possible) is crucial to avoid further systemic damage.  And even those who are healed of their chemical sensitivity would be advised to avoid exposing themselves to chemicals which could begin the process all over again.

I recently experienced, myself, another long-winded reaction to an unknown but very strong and pervasive outdoor chemical, compounded by other "ordinary" chemical cleaners and/or synthetically scented laundry products.  Last weekend, I found myself having to locate my car in a parking lot suddenly filled with a chemical in the air which had not been there at all when I arrived.  The next morning, I had an additional exposure to a chemical in an office which carried a chemical fragrance strong enough to permeate my clothes within an hour.   By Saturday afternoon, I was developing what I'd have to call "nerve rashes" at various points on my face -- red, raised spots, sharply demarcated by lines in places, almost like little triangles, accompanied by nerve tingling in those places as though I'd just had novocaine which was now wearing off.  The rashes and tingling recurred several times over this past week, decreasing in intensity and frequency as the week went on.

I could have easily attributed these reactions to several different food allergies.  However, when the chemical reaction had finally spent itself and I returned to each potentially allergenic food as usual, there were no symptoms whatsoever.  Imagine if I'd known nothing about toxic injury and had hauled myself off to an allergist this past week, with all of the typical, accompanying office chemicals!

This, in fact, is exactly the kind of thing I did 20-something years ago, resulting in innumerable doctor visits for innumerable symptoms and in repeated social accusations, as a result, that I was a malingerer or avoiding others (I was avoiding their fragrances) out of some inherent negativity in my heart.  The emotional toll this disbelief and misunderstanding took on me was severe.  Not to mention the fact that not a single one of those doctors was able to help me one bit.  And so I languished for periods of years in this ever-worsening cascade of symptoms.  I know, now, that I am far from alone in this experience.  I was not Internet-savvy in the 1990's, nor was I able to write, due to the state of continual devastation I was in.

Another key point I wish to mention is that, during this past week as I detoxified from whatever chemicals I'd been exposed to last weekend, the effect of the chemicals on my emotions was particularly strong.  By this sign, along with the "nerve rashes," I can now gauge, for myself, the severity of the chemical exposure.  Whatever this combination of chemicals was, it was very bad.  I'm now recalling, also, that beginning last Sunday was a two-day migraine which required many doses of ibuprofen just to get me through to Tuesday.  The migraine continued to pound beneath each ibuprofen I took.  Such "whopper" migraines are, of course, another red flag that certain chemicals have affected me more severely than "usual."

Emotions are not scientifically measurable, and there are things in everyone's life which can potentially cause them varying degrees of sorrow.  However, I have found that chemicals will take a fairly manageable sorrow or source of mental/emotional distress and intensify it internally.  When the chemicals wear off, I'm able to experience the sorrow or other distress in its "true size" and begin to move on.  This has occurred enough times over the years for me to discern the pattern.

All of this being the case, I wish to extend my written thanks to those medical professionals (some of whom I quoted loosely by memory, above), for all of their work toward understanding, speaking about, and seeking treatments for toxic injury:

William Meggs, M.D., Ph.D. - Brody School of Medicine, North Carolina

Claudia Miller, M.D. - University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, Texas

Lt. Gen. Ronald R. Blank - former U.S. Army Surgeon General and former Commander, Walter Reed Medical Center

Christine Oliver, M.D. -  Assistant Clinical Professor, Harvard Medical School

Stephen Levine, M.D. - Director, Mount Sinai Occupational and Environmental Clinic

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Speaks on Chemicals

Friends, friends:

As far as news goes, this statement is HUGE!

Please, everyone, read this CNN link before it disappears:

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg writes (special to CNN): "Are toxic chemicals putting your family at risk?"

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Tired of Feeling "Stuffed"

Hello, friends,

Except for light cream in my coffee, I've been going without cow's milk and cow's-milk products for several days now.  About 14 years ago, I had gone without cow's milk for a year or so -- and, except for the ever-lingering chemical sensitivity, I felt reborn.

I am taking that lesson to heart and going without cow's milk once again.  Already, my energy level has increased, my body feels lighter, my step is quicker, and I'm able to assume a more normal physical workload.  At the same time, there is that dragging feeling in the center of me, that "not quite full" feeling, that "something is missing" sensation -- plus many headaches, but, on the whole, milder headaches than usual.  (Except for today -- a whopper is coming and I'm intending to head that off with ibuprofen.  We have to do what we have to do.)  I remember that empty, "headachey" feeling, as well, from 14 years ago.  I think it took somewhere from two weeks to one month to adjust to this.  It's a good adjustment for me to make, because it brings me back to the metabolism of childhood when I was always a skinny little thing who did not like to feel "stuffed."  The inflammatory and nerve-congesting effects of cow's milk, I've noticed, blunt that necessary recognition of satiety, for me.  

So what happens, in lieu of that "empty" feeling, is a need for honest, better metabolized protein to fill in the gap. I've been cooking lots of beef (no, not the best kind -- funds are low) and lots of eggs.  There are little cans of sardines to help with lunch, and tuna at intervals (I know, I know, the mercury . . .).

Not perfection -- but definitely improvement.  My clothes are feeling looser.

The bottom line is this:  The less unused fat on me there is, the less space there will be for my body to store toxins in the flesh.  In place of cow's milk, I'm using coconut milk in my (gluten-free) cereal.  In place of ice cream, I'm buying sorbet.  For yogurt and cheese, I rely on goat-milk products.  The fatty-acid chains in goat's milk are more efficiently and more quickly metabolized than the fatty-acid chains in cow's milk.

Moreover, the homogenization of cow's milk has the effect of breaking up a key molecule (the name escapes me), rendering it indigestible by many.  This ends up pockmarking the gut with holes ("leaky gut"), just as the gluten molecule's toxic fraction frequently ends up pockmarking the gut.  The gut then becomes inflamed (a potentially dangerous thing, e.g., cancer), digestion is impaired globally, essential nutrients are lost, and the whole person suffers.

Here's hoping that the goat milk will prove tolerable, in the long run, and that I can keep going at this!  If you have any personal stories about cow's milk and/or goat's milk and their potential interactivity with the aftereffects of toxic injury, please feel free to share them.

Cheers!

  

~ Carolyn

A Difficult Topic

Sunshine to you on this glorious day!

A very difficult topic:  I'm writing today on behalf of those whose hearts, minds, and bodies were insulted by physical and/or psychological trauma prior to falling prey to toxic injury.

This is a difficult topic, firstly, because it is both highly sensitive and highly personal -- not easily discussed in any venue.  Secondly, it is a difficult topic because the thought process of unaffected onlookers can quickly veer in the direction of:  "So perhaps your toxic injury is all in your head, after all."

For a person who has been both traumatized and toxically injured, this judgment would be a devastating and unjust ramification.

Trauma, it is now known, can disrupt and alter neurological pathways in the brain.  The body under physical and/or psychological siege must contend with skyrocketing "fight-or-flight" adrenalin surges; subsequent hormonal interference and/or frank hormonal imbalance; resultant metabolic and circulatory changes due to the impact of severe stress on cortisol levels; sleep disruption or sleep deprivation; and the crushing weight of overwhelming emotional pain through it all.

If non-traumatized widowers in bereavement can succumb to heart attack and early death, just imagine how vulnerable can be the bodies of those already ravaged by physical and/or emotional pain inflicted by others or by catastrophic events.

Add a few pervasive chemicals to the mix, and such already-afflicted physical systems can, in effect, "tip right over."  With all systems overloaded to begin with, toxins can then become just "one too many" insults. 

And if that weren't enough, yet more aversive ingredients are added when others rush to judgment about such suffering and add "insults to injury."

For those of you have have, in fact, suffered debilitating emotional pain and trauma, please know that my heart goes out to you.

With this brief commentary, I've only just begun to dip my little toe in the water of a very complex topic.  I've caught wind of cognitive treatments for toxic injury which, it is claimed, have successfully enabled some toxically injured people to retrain the part (or parts) of the brain which are thought to be operative in neurologically sensitized reactions to chemicals.  As I understand it, this type of treatment specifically rejects the philosophy that toxic injury/chemical sensitivity is "all in the head."  The brain "retraining," therefore, does not imply that the cause of chemical sensitivity is embedded in psychological factors -- but merely that this physical malady lodged its effects in the neurologically reactive part of the brain.

Moreover, there are surely many toxically injured people who were never previously traumatized -- so that this suspected effect of the chemical reactivity lodging in the brain would hold true for both traumatized and non-traumatized sufferers.  May we respectfully acknowledge that trauma of any sort can render the body vulnerable to subsequent injury; and may we recognize that, once toxic injury actually does occur, it is firmly rooted in the body.

The true implication of such reports is that, if we (the toxically injured with or without previous trauma) can manage to access that physically sensitive part of the brain through the circuit of our own thought processes, we may have more power than we think to assist our bodies in at least some degree of healing.

While I'm always especially careful to reserve judgment about the emotional and spiritual safety of cognitive treatment endeavors with which I'm personally unfamiliar, I do grant myself the freedom to research them liberally and, in the meantime, to hope.

I hope I've spread a little sunshine to you today.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Blooming Where I'm Planted

Good day, friends,

Somewhere in this chaos, there is order.

Having waited a week to be able to see a doctor for a specific medical concern, I awoke today with a pounding migraine and could not attend the appointment.  Because the headache continued to pulse hard beneath the ibuprofen I'd taken, I decided this would be a very bad day to place myself in a mainstream medical office filled with staff and patient fragrances, synthetic laundry scents, carpets, liberally sprayed disinfectants, other applied cleaning solutions, and possibly air fresheners -- unless I wanted to bring on back-to-back migraine syndromes, or, in layman's terms, a "double whammy."  Many things are now on hold until this wild, sickening pounding and rapid heart rate calm down.  This could be hours -- or days. 

Under such nonnegotiable circumstances, I choose to believe that I simply was not meant to be examined at that particular doctor's office -- at least for today.

Yesterday's outstanding chemical exposure (which brought on today's migraine) was, once again, extremely strong synthetic laundry fragrances on people's clothes and possibly from household dryer vents.  So today's reactive distress is a full-scale systemic event, with the central nervous system in an uproar, vision shaky, etc.

How ironic it is that exactly a year ago I wrote my blog post entitled, Getting Sick at the Doctor's" (link).  The very same reason I thought it wise to skip my doctor's appointment today!

For those of you who are new to the subject of toxic injury and its recurring symptoms, let me clarify here that reactivity to chemicals can be immediate or delayed.  When delayed, my own most common window of consistent patterning of symptoms is one to two days following the chemical exposure(s).  These chemicals needn't be radical things such as pesticides but can be "everyday" toxins found in many common household, office, and personal products -- products generally thought to be innocuous but which happen to contain nerve toxins ("neurotoxins"); eye, skin, and/or mucous membrane irritants; and carcinogens, et al. in their fragrances and accompanying chemical ingredients.

As I stated above, somewhere in this chaos, there is order.  My task is to find it -- or to make it.  I'm choosing to do both.  I can easily accept that, perhaps for other reasons completely unknown to me, it would have been a bad day for me to travel to the medical doctor.  Beyond that, I'm choosing to accept that perhaps I'm just another small voice needed to help warn others about the increasingly high potential for toxic injury posed by many commonly used cleaning, fragrance, and "pest-control" products.  Perhaps, by browsing through my posts, those who are new to this topic can get a "feel" for how toxic injury behaves once it has occurred.  If I can convey at least that much, that will have been something.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

May: Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Month

May greetings to you -- it's Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Month!

How does it feel to be the messenger of an undesirable message?

Terrible.

It's like being patted on the back as an esteemed member of whatever "group" one yearns to belong to, and then being shunned with the unspoken message, "But we didn't know you were like that."

Yes, we humans have trials -- but we do not become our trials!  We are still human beings with hopes and dreams just like the rest of our fellow humans.  Our humanity, however scarred, still operates the same way.

If you are new to the issue of toxic injury/multiple chemical sensitivity, please read through the following brief overview and MCS story written by leading chemical sensitivity and disability advocate, Ann McCampbell, M.D., Environmental Health and Chemical Sensitivity Consultant:

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (by Ann McCampbell, M.D.)

"My MCS Story" by Ann McCampbell, M.D.

I so much relate to several aspects of this story, especially the "once having been completely well" part!  (Thank you, Dr. McCampbell.)

And please, if you can, pass on this excellent overview and personal MCS story to others.  Thank you!

Cheers!

~ Carolyn