The Impact of Metals

Hello, Friends,

For anyone interested in what heavy metal toxicity can do to a person . . .  You've been reading it here.

What follows is, for me, priceless information (!):

I saw a new practitioner last week who took samples from me and tested . . .  I'm high in many metals,* cadmium at the top of the list.  I see, from the following abstract, that cadmium has a particularly adverse effect on the kidneys:

Cadmium & its adverse effects on human health. By Bernard A. , Department of Public Health, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. bernard@toxi.ucl.ac.be; NCBI PubMed.gov; US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

I have no blood sugar problem.  My blood sugar is good -- even my calcium is good.  But my ability to digest is very poor.  My Vitamin C stores are completely depleted.  My adrenals are exhausted and I'm inundated with toxins.

Metals.  If I have the courage to take the supplements suggested to me (new supplements always take courage, for me), I might actually detoxify!

The rest of this little report is very interesting.  Last Friday, I underwent acupuncture with this new practitioner.  First, I underwent "colorpuncture."**  This is the shining of colored lights on various meridian points in the body.  This prepared the body for receptivity of the real acupuncture needles -- and, you see, I thought I was escaping this by having colorpuncture, but I was wrong!

So there I was, a pincushion.  A strange and wonderful thing happened.  I'd gone into the practitioner's office with my throat so swollen on one side, it felt like a pillow in there around which the food and liquid had to move.  It was very disconcerting, to put it mildly.

Within a few minutes of all the acupuncture needles having been placed, I felt my throat again.  There was no perceived obstruction.  I could swallow normally, freely.  I had my throat back!

This weekend, I was around chemicals which started it up all over again in the throat.  Today, however, the throat has come down.  My knees/legs/feet, while still holding inflammation, are performing significantly better.  My knees aren't cracking and I'm able to walk up and down stairs much more normally.  The muscles of the knees are now weak, because the knees had been so full and stiff for so long, the muscles couldn't even operate.  But today, I'm doing chores!  I've been sleeping much more normally.

I haven't yet taken the supplement I was advised to take.  I'll tell you why.  I wanted -- indeed, needed -- to see what the acupuncture had accomplished all on its own.  I approach new interventions logically.  Yes, I want to feel better.  But I also want to know exactly what each piece of the intervention is capable of doing, taken alone.  I'll be working up to taking the supplement I'm supposed to be taking.

This is what the acupuncture did for me, all by itself:

1)  It helped me to feel my fatigue once again (I wasn't feeling it because my adrenal system was running in highest gear, all out of whack), and to sleep like a normal person.  The acupuncture calmed down the whole system and reset it at a lower level, a calmer level.  The calming effect began right away, while the needles were in.  It would have been nice to take a nap right there.  That was the goal, and it worked.

2)  I can feel my body finally able to help itself a bit.  After being exposed to polyurethane over the weekend -- and now that I think of it, the smell had been wafting upward to the upper levels of the building I was in for over an hour before I entered the actual room that contained it on the floors -- I felt physically sickened and discombobulated and could only sleep a few hours that night.  As a chemical reaction progresses, I always feel a "cap" on my appetite, as though something "plastic" has settled upon and within me.  It's a nearly queasy and sometimes outright queasy feeling.  This is a signal to me, always, that digestion cannot happen and that I'm in this reaction "for the long haul."  When digestion freezes and appetite cannot be felt, that, for me, is always "phase 1."  "Phase 1" was definitely occurring. 

As the reaction reached its peak, I felt completely undone yesterday, from a central nervous system perspective; but today, I'm doing unusually well.

3)  My knees aren't full to the point of crackling.  I can walk up the stairs and the knees -- although the muscles around them are now very weak from having been frozen in place due to swelling -- are moving normally.

4) I'd been barely able to eat, but now I'm eating a little bit more.  While I can only take in a little bit of food at a time, I can feel hunger again.

This is all wonderful and amazing to me.  I'm so grateful.  I hope to feel better and better and to help others by recounting this experience.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn


*(1) "If a person has a high body burden of lead, mercury, or other heavy metals, those heavy metals are thought to contribute to the development or aggravation of MCS."  Quote from Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, June 26, 2013.
 
**(2) I do not delve, myself, into what are termed the "spiritual" aspects of any alternative treatments.  I strictly focus upon the biological realities utilized in those treatments which I believe have a sound scientific basis.  I hope, each time, that alternative medicine is really onto something scientifically based and effective with this or that promising procedure.

From the Outside

Hello, Friends,

LOL, this just caught my eye:  "Meet the Nasa employee whose job it is to sniff everything before it goes into space" - by Christopher Hooton, The Independent (UK), July 2, 2014.

So that's what it looks like from the outside!

Check this out --  I wrote it back in 2011:


Book Troubles (or Strong Scents Clinging to Paper - The MCS Files)

I'm reading a story about a girl whose boyfriend broke up with her because she was reading a book at a funeral.  Prior to that, she'd walked into a lamppost while reading.  Reading while cooking, she'd accidentally started a kitchen fire.

As for myself, I was caught sniffing a book Saturday at the library, checking for absorbed scents too strong to bring home.  The pretty, petite librarian clicked by happily in her high heels when I heard -- and saw, out of the corner of my eye -- the sudden catch in her step.  It was then that I realized the book in my hand was still held up to my nose.

She picked up speed again, thankfully . . . . .


It's a way of life.   :)

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Too Sick To Be Sick

I'm quietly resting at home today, drinking fluids.

While "earthing" yesterday at Gloucester Bay, Massachusetts, I tried twice to Tweet a photo.  Neither photo went through.

I took this as a sign:  It was an oxymoron to "earth" with a cell phone.  I turned off the device -- except to take isolated photos when something picturesque came into view -- and luxuriated in the serenity of a large, sun-warmed rock.  Ensconced upon this benevolent chair, I finally felt the earth under me.  Contact. One-to-one.  Self-to-rock.  This was a physical connection which expanded exponentially to include the reverberations of sand, ocean, currents, sun, and sky.  I wasn't about to move.  Not yet.  Not for a while.

A mother with a vivid Bostonian accent tended energetically to her child on the sand.  I enjoyed the ring of both accent and action.  Hearty.  Direct.  Strong.  Capable.

I let the sun shine on my swollen legs draped over chosen rock.  Warmth from above and below.  Now, I had it all.

With every little lap of the tide, gratitude washed over me.  I was alive.  Some 15+ hours earlier, the word "hospital" had been coursing through my head.  Unable either to sit or to lie down, I had leaned on hotel windowsill, chair, and desk like a woman in labor.  Could barely speak, barely moan.  Color gray and green, I'd alternated between hot and cold as the pain seized and temporarily paralyzed each set of internal organs in turn, beginning with a sore, abrasive sensation in the highest region of the stomach and working its way down over a 12-hour period.

First, the muscles seized up and squeezed me in the region of the pancreas and liver.  Hours later, the pain moved down into the kidney area.  Wherever it moved in the front and side, the pain also went to the corresponding level of my back, so that sitting against or lying upon the affected areas was impossible.  I was sore from the inside to the outside.  The kidney area was then gripped in this way for several hours.  Pressure was building inside of me because digestion and metabolism were literally frozen at these places.  I was swelling more and more in the middle, could barely cart myself around, the sensation of being weighted down was increasing, and I thought I might die.  I went from sweaty to chilly, color green to gray, back and forth, back and forth.

I felt the instinct to get myself outdoors.  I crept my way down the hotel stairs, barely able to inhale against the neurological restriction gripping me, outside to the car.  I tried to sit in the passenger seat with the windows open.  My back was too painful in the kidney area.  It was impossible to lean back.  My middle was growing intolerably heavy with the increasing swelling of paralyzed digestion.  I could barely move, but I stood up and leaned on the open car door, not caring what I looked like.  I was laboring against something toxic that was trying to kill me.  That's all I knew.

Insight came with a blast when I was able to focus on the significance of a relief measure I'd discovered several years ago.  It's not a cure, but it always relieves to a marked extent.  This relief measure consists of: (1) intense massage pressure applied to the feet (especially to the soles/arches), and (2) the squeezing of the pad of the big toe.  These measures have the effect of helping release the grip of the digestive/abdominal/back muscles to some extent, enough to enable easier breathing and some relaxation under the overall feeling of intense muscular restriction and pain.  There are apparently some noteworthy nerve paths from these areas of the feet to the digestive muscles.

Out there by the car, the significance of the consistent effectiveness of this partial relief measure pierced through my consciousness with absolute certainty:  What I was experiencing, although it played out through the entire digestive tract, was definitely a neurological event . . . poisoned tissue and nerves recoiling, systemically.

Let me count the triggers:  Extreme and abrasive synthetic scents (e.g., chemical deodorizers) in a historical building we'd visited that afternoon.  I was exposed to these repeatedly, on and off, for over an hour.  Two to 15 minutes is usually sufficient to do damage to me.  This went above and beyond.  Shortly before that, I'd ingested a restaurant meal of grilled cheese and french fries.  I couldn't even remember the last time I'd had grilled cheese out.  This kind of restaurant meal often involves the spraying of pans with synthetic oils.

During my last trip involving a hotel stay in September, 2013, it was highly probable that a hotel breakfast I'd eaten had come from cookware sprayed with a synthetic oil.  If my meal had not been affected by synthetic spray right there on the buffet line, then it was clear that the cooks would obviously have had no objection, in general, to using this spray within the kitchen -- from whence the food emerged.

This had been a chemical procedure which was easy to see, although the realization that it might well have affected my own food came much later.  Much spraying of the oil had been done by servers and guests, alternately, on the buffet line where some food items were cooking.  The guests were spraying it on the cookware excessively, some doing this several times over.  I'd had a physical reaction, on the way home from that trip, identical to the reaction I've been describing here, above.  In that hotel, last September, there had also seemed to have been reapplications of synthetic deodorizers in the public areas.

The essence of the problem, as I see it, is the impact of both inhaled and ingested neurotoxins.  For me, this impact is disastrous.  In case I had any doubts, I realized this weekend that I am still very chemically sensitive.  I need to pay attention.

I reflected upon the increased swelling of my lower limbs over the past several weeks and months . . . which has steadily improved since this physically cataclysmic event of two nights ago.  My knees are beginning to feel like knees again, instead of like two swollen and gritty pools of sludge.  The swelling around my ankles has come down noticeably.  I've been exceptionally careful, since two nights ago, to avoid chemicals in food and air.

What had been different for me over the past year -- or two?

Increasingly, I've exposed myself to more and more neurotoxins, neglectful of a process called "masking."  It is said that chemical sensitivity, over time, can change in its physical symptomatology.  Some symptoms can disappear, or become "masked," while the chemical sensitivity continues and even increases on other physical levels.  Quietly, unobtrusively, the body is overwhelmed until it becomes "too sick to be sick."  The toxicity, at this point, is so bad, it's embedded deeply within the body.  Organ systems can be affected.

Over the past year, especially, I've tried to approximate doing everything "normal" people do.  I've eaten plenty of foods with chemical additives, thinking I was scoring so many victories.  There have been no complete cessations of airborne chemical exposures for me anymore -- it's been one exposure on top of another within a day or two of the last one.  My rest periods from chemical exposures used to be longer, more defined, more deliberate.  They worked.

Until digestion resumed and my metabolism started flowing smoothly again yesterday and today, I hadn't realized I'd been so utterly filled with ingested and airborne toxins that I couldn't tell up from down, so to speak.  Now, I feel much more clean and clear.  Because the Massachusetts hotel room, besides being impeccably clean, was also remarkably scent-free, I was able to recover there beside an open window.  I slept the longest I've slept in months.  There is a calm to my physical being, a more fully "present" feeling, a long-missed sensation of being "in command."

It took a severe crisis to bring this about.  But since it did, and since I lived through it, I can discern through my body and mind the huge impact of being free of those toxins.  I am so grateful.  Grateful to have learned this priceless lesson:

I am truly chemically sensitive, and denial is not an option.  Being able to reclaim that truth and work with it -- even at this late date, whether or not I still have Lyme disease -- is a gift that I dare not spurn.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

The Impending Purification

I was younger than I am now when I wrote the story in the previous post.  I was even younger than that when I wrote this small item (early 2011).  I really put my heart into this one:

I envision, at some unnamed date in the future, a "detergent-and-fabric-softener, et al." environmental cleanup that would rival those mandated for asbestos and Chinese drywall.

When they realize the incredible particulate damage to human health wrought by the pungent, peppery, acerbic, neurotoxic synthetic fragrances that define most laundry, cleaning, hygiene, and deodorizing products in America, people will be rushing to throw out entire wardrobes, bed linens, curtains, carpets, and all upholstered items in their homes.  The invisible particulate of these neurotoxic fragrances clings, cloyingly, to all absorbent surfaces it touches.  Library books, milk and juice cartons, paper supplies, and plastic-wrapped foods are not spared.

****************************************************

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

Keeping My Chin Up (the MCS Files)

~ Written by me in May, 2012.  I was younger* when I wrote this.  I began in the middle of the story.   I'll catch up with you at the end . . .  
  
And so I went to get the verdict.  On the ailing shoulder.  I didn't want to go.  This reluctance made no sense to me, because I really did like the doctor.  

I got lost twice on the way then entered the wrong building, whose hallways smelled like an overdose of disinfectant.  A counselor in one of its offices told me that the doctor had probably moved to the next building over, but now I felt like staying right where I was . . . the counselor was so nice, so forgiving -- we can never have too much forgiveness . . . . .

I wanted to go home, but I didn't go.  I tried the next building.  It didn't smell, but the elevator squealed and heaved and the stairwell was dark and desolate, with ominous splotches on the cement.  With the elevator out of the question and the stairwell looking menacing, that was it.  What if the entry and exit doors locked me in?  I was going home.

I started to go.

Nearly to the front door, I pondered the shame of it all.  A 49-year-old woman afraid of a stairwell.  I imagined myself hunched over, some 10 years later, with an immobilized shoulder; a gnarled, useless hand;  back bent, neck twisted from all the compensating contortions I would have had to assume, having chosen to avoid the stairwell that could have led to my deliverance.

I turned back, acted purposeful (there was now a lady in the hallway), and jammed myself into the stairwell, racing up the stairs with my eyes nearly shut.  The doors did not lock me in at top or bottom.  This was fortunate.  Having reached my destination, I met the lady from the downstairs hallway now exiting the elevator.  It apparently had not trapped her or sucked all the air out of her lungs.  Things were looking up.

Colognes wafted through the waiting room . . . but even this was better than the dank, stained stairwell, so I sat and inhaled.  Ushered finally into the doctor's office, a sense of relief came over me.  Now I felt like crying.  In my mind's eye, I pictured my tears drenching the room, dripping off the examining table, pouring over the countertops, causing the chair to float.  Salt water pooled in my eyes.  I wiped it away.  What on earth.  This was an orthopedist.

The shoulder was fine, fine -- just rotator-cuff tendonitis, solved easily with a buffalo-sized dose of anti-inflammatories twice per day for two weeks.  I already knew this wasn't going to happen -- I can't take most prescription medications -- but I stayed agreeable because, as doctors go, this one was a patient's dream.  Prompt, calm, cheerful, uncomplicated.  (He told me I could keep the paper gown -- said it looked good on me.  This brought forth a giggle.) 

Now I just have to hunt down the natural ("alternative") equivalent of 16 (yes, sixteen!) 200-mg ibuprofen tablets per day.  This shouldn't be hard . . . . . 

Upon exiting the building, the source of my mad apprehension was realized in full.  The surrounding air and lawn, which had previously smelled like air and lawn, were now overtaken by something I would have to call at least the equivalent of dry-cleaning fluid.  It was just everywhere.  To myself, I called it, "Perflourocholoromanganate," because that's exactly what it smelled like.   

To my horror, small children were outside next door playing under the watch of their day-care teachers -- with the air smelling as though the little town had just been the victim of chemical warfare.  

The headache is coming now, and I'm getting ready to meet it. 

***********************************

(Slight verbal errors corrected, June 16, 2014.)

*Alluding to the obvious date of May, 2012 -- as in "'younger' than I am now, in 2014" -- cited immediately prior to this statement -- poking fun at myself. 

My shoulder had felt a bit strange as I'd reached forward to put my items on the checkout line at the supermarket; my arm later became immobilized, with sharp pain.  My kind neighbor, Nancy (thank you, Nancy, again!), saved the day for me by bringing over the magnesium oil spray she'd carefully researched.  Upon spraying it on the shoulder, I began gradually to regain movement there.  Although I had the shoulder checked out by the M.D. (above) to verify that there was no injury to the joint, I never needed the anti-inflammatory medication he prescribed.  The magnesium oil pulled me through.

Cheers!

~ Carolyn
                 

Injustice Severe

Out of sync,

raw nerves triggered

by a blast of unknown scent

inhuman, unfriendly, unbearable,

wafting through the trees,

tainting the sweet forest

then gone, gone . . . 

except for what is left

in me,

pulsing through my head

unnaturally,

pounding for over a day,

stealing my time, my life,

belittling intentions,

erasing plans,

mocking the calendar,

setting obscure nerves into

frightening seizures of motion,

and tilting my world

beyond my reach. 

This, the destruction wreaked 

by harsh and unforgiving

molecules

thus rearranged and approved by man

then borne away with the wind

to no account.  
 
~ Written by me, 2011

Cheers!

~ Carolyn 

Where's "Vinegar"?

May 30, 2014

Hello, Friends,

A funny thought occurred to me a little while ago . . . 

Perhaps I'll make a post out of it.  After all, this blog has undergone some changes since 2011.  It surely can't hurt to update readers on the status of things.

When I began this blog in 2011, I wrote under my real name, Carolyn.  Then, I liked the sound of "Daisies" because it went so well with the blog title.  I switched over to the pen name of "Daisies" for a while.  But, all things considered, it seemed simpler and more commonsensical to use my own name.

So, here I am, the same Carolyn, the only author of this blog there has ever been.  The title "Daisies and Vinegar" was, from the moment of this blog's inception, meant to be a catchy phrase combining two natural, fresh-as-sunshine nouns in a memorable way.  It was never meant to denote the existence of two authors!  In-between, I made some title changes which, frankly, didn't work for me.  I then went back to the title "Daisies and Vinegar" -- with the "2011" added now -- and I'm happy that I did.  But -- LOL -- there's never been any author "Vinegar" on this blog, or any other author by any other name.  Just myself.  

There are, indeed, blogs where two or more people participate as authors/arrangers/contributors, etc.  It never dawned on me, until this evening, that people could actually be wondering where "Vinegar" was!  The thought made me laugh -- just imagining someone writing as "Vinegar" . . .

At any rate, in case anyone was wondering where "Vinegar" went -- well, you've read this far and I think I've made the point.    :)

Cheers!

~ Carolyn

From the Inside

Swollen from knees to feet, I've been.  I'd look at my big and small bottles of supplements and, instinctively, could barely take any of them.  Something in me said, "No.  Wrong answer."  This year-long regimen now felt inaccurate, unbalanced.

I began to take charge.  Went back to my trusted chiropractor.  A little step.  But he was ready with the encouragement I wanted and needed.

That led to another little step.  I went back to my herbal practitioner.  He gave me various mixtures of herbs in water.  Bingo!

By the next day, I was moving around again.  Getting things done.  Without thinking first about having to get things done.  Just . . . doing.  This always means some inflammation is being significantly reduced.  In my toes, for starters.  And in my knees.  It's not only about how it looks.  It always begins to happen . . . on the inside.

And when wellness really begins to happen on the inside, motion begins.  The motion of living.  I go to the store, but now I not only drive there -- I go in.  I follow my list and get what I need.  I leave.  I drive home.

When the overall systemic inflammation is really bad, I drive to the store and then find I'm too tired to get out of the car -- and then I drive home.  Can I count how many times this has happened?  All I know is, too many times.

I was in a major "healthy" food store this afternoon.  As I was walking toward the freezer to grab some nutritionally packed loaves of (sprouted) Ezekiel Bread, a young clerk wheeled around to announce to me that, on Easter Sunday, it will be 61 degrees outside.  This made me happy, and this made him happy.  He followed this up by praising God, with upraised voice, a few times.  He was a sweet and gentle soul, and I appreciated his innocent exuberance.

I thought to myself, "I'm with you, brother!  I'm grabbing my sprouted wheat bread even though the antibody test said wheat makes my antibodies rise -- because I still believe in wheat and I think I really need a metabolically safe and worthy specimen of it and the herbal practitioner agrees that there's more to it than just an isolated antibody test . . . and, to my great joy, dear clerk, I'm reaching into this freezer and buying this bread because my whole being says, 'YES, buy that bread!'"

Just a few days earlier, as I was beginning to reflect to myself, "Hmm, I wonder if there's such a thing as 'too much iodine,'" the herbal practitioner said that my thyroid is fine and I don't need the liquid kelp.  He agreed with my thought that, possibly, too much liquid kelp -- over-treating the thyroid gland -- could have been contributing to the leg-and-feet swelling.  I backtracked and asked him about the Lyme disease I'd had in the spring and summer -- because that was thought to have made my legs and feet swell.  He explained that, when the Lyme is gone [which it is], you can then see what's been going on underneath it and address those issues.  He said that the Lyme had, indeed, made the swelling worse.  This was true.  I did have some baseline swelling, and then it got much worse when the Lyme hit.

Now, any time I have any germ or physical invader coursing through my system, my legs and feet swell considerably more.  When the physical invader is wiped out by the herbs, the swelling goes down and functionality returns.  But there is that baseline swelling, still.

This is my challenge.  It's a non-bacterial, rheumatic-type thing.  This is the thing which, perhaps, too much iodine was also worsening.  Additionally, my own thoughts are that there is also a lack of something -- or of many things -- in my diet, nutritionally.  Which is why I'm reaching out for that sprouted wheat bread.

The sprouted form acts much less like wheat, and it's filled with vitamins, minerals, and fiber.  Fish oil, I'm sure, will also help.  I use Carlson's fish oil because it's highly rated as being free of many contaminants.  First, however, I'm going to build myself up a bit nutritionally because, when my meals aren't solid -- when they're insubstantial in some significant way -- I get arrhythmias (PVC's).  The fish oil, being a very effective anti-inflammatory substance, tends to drop the blood pressure in a way that I can feel.  This, for me, can be a precursor to compensatory PVC's -- the heart's attempt to right the balance.

My journey from flagrant MCS into flagrant Lyme, then out of Lyme into decreased MCS, then battling lingering inflammation . . . this is not a smooth journey.  There are ups and downs and seesawing back and forth between this regimen of supplementation and that, this nutritional plan or that.  There is progress and there are setbacks.  But with each setback often comes a new kernel of knowledge, and I build on that.

What will happen to my regimen of vitamin/mineral supplementation?  Well, some mainstays, such as magnesium and calcium, I'll continue to take in the 1:2 or the 1:1 ratio, respectively.  Other supplements will be eliminated or adjusted.  It was suggested to me that I cut my Carlson's Vitamin D3 dosage of 4,000 i.u. per day in half now.  There can also be such a thing as too much Vitamin D, I was told.  With the warmer weather on the way, I'll focus on being out in the sun.  I'm going to put more of my attention now on Carlson's Vitamin E "E-Gems Elite."  I'd forgotten to take iron, so that's a major problem easily fixed:  I'll take the iron.  Added back into the lineup from years ago will be several cups of dandelion root tea per day and 500 mg of Vitamin B-6 per day, to combat fluid retention.  And . . . my trusty Nutricology Buffered Vitamin C powder will add some overall resiliency and smooth out the rough edges.  All of this plus daily walking.
 
I've suffered more from MCS lately -- once again.  There haven't been many cataclysmic migraines, but there are those pulsing and balance-affecting reactions of the eye/facial area and the central nervous system which can last into the next day.  My chemical-sensitivity reactions are markedly deceased and muted, but they're still present.  I've wondered often, lately, if inhaled common chemicals in the public arena are also contributing, much more than I've realized, to the swelling in my legs and feet.

When you've been radically chemically sensitive and have fallen prey to Lyme disease, you instinctively keep your eyes and ears open to more information on these lines.

If I learn anything new, I'll drop off the information here!

Cheers!

~ Carolyn