History of Perfume

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a land far away, people used flower extracts, spices and herbs for perfume. Can you imagine? And they didn't even bathe back then. I swear I was born in the wrong century! Perfume used to be very expensive because it was difficult to make as it took time, skill and natural, quality ingredients.


The chemical boom started right around World War II and that's when everything went artificial, including perfume. I wouldn't be surprised if the deadly nerve gas developed during the war ended up as one of the ingredients in perfume. Perhaps the premise is if you can't attract a man with your fake stink, you can kill him as the alternative?

Toluene is in every perfume. It's also in furniture stripper, gasoline and explosives. It causes cancer along with a host of other health issues such as brain damage, memory loss, muscle control issues, numbness, tremors, headaches, and asthma. That's just one of at least 800 toxic chemicals used to make one perfume formula.

Perfume is still expensive, but chemicals are cheap. What consumers now pay for are the trade secrets (formulas) and the brand names.  What a rip. To protect these trade secrets, perfume manufacturers are totally unregulated by any government entity and are not required to list specific ingredients on labels. (Of course, that isn't to suggest any government entity regulates anything anyway!) This is excellent for sales because if people knew what they were putting on their bodies, they might decide it wasn't worth the health risk.  Someone once said wearing perfume is like covering yourself in paint...except you'd be a prettier color.

The use of the word fragrance is interesting to me. It's such a pretty word, but all it means on a label is a chemical that rearranges your brain cells so you think you are smelling a particular scent. When you see fragrance on a label, think toxic poison. Not so pretty now, is it? Also, stay away from any product with the ingredient "masking fragrance."  This is a chemical designed to shut off your brain so you can't smell it and it's used in many unscented products.


I read a study that discussed the horrors of chemical scents and how they affect our ability to make good choices when selecting a mate. We have been conditioned to believe our natural scents are repellent to others and it scares the hell out of us. Have you ever dated someone who's natural smell was so bad it made you gag? They would be classified as  "chemically incompatible" with you. The next person who comes along might think that person smells wonderful! This aspect of matchmaking is impossible to detect if one or both parties are bathed in artificial stink. Yet we are afraid someone might smell us so we cover  up our own scent with perfumes, colognes, and body washes. Unfortunately, if we can't properly smell the opposite sex, how do we select a compatible mate? Maybe this is why divorce rates are so high?  The study went on to say that perfumes don't attract the opposite sex and often disgust them. Scents that do attract are vanilla for women and cloves/cinnamon for men. Our ancestors knew what they were doing.


People are slowly starting to recognize the health ramifications of perfumes. Many businesses, schools and government offices are implementing fragrance-free policies. Even whole cities! Someday we will see fragrance bans in public places like we see smoking restrictions.  That will be a time of celebration.

The Toxic Waste Dump

Scent is the number one reason people buy shampoo. It stands to reason health and beauty manufacturers will take every opportunity to increase sales of their products by adding fragrances. I'm sure they spend thousands if not millions of dollars on research, test marketing to see which smells are the most attractive to the paying customer. But with all the scented products one might opt to use in a day, wouldn't it all mesh together in one big, personal cloud of toxic stink?

Here's an example of the morning ritual using scent examples from internet advertisements:

Lather with hibiscus and shea butter soap, suds with herbal-scented shampoo, rinse with watermelon-scented hair conditioner, squeegee on jasmine lotion, roll on floral-scented deodorant, poof with cactus flower hair mousse, spray on cotton candy hair scent, brush for minty freshness, rinse with berry-flavored mouthwash, dab on vanilla-scented lipstick, dress with apple-mango-tango laundry detergent and airy-fresh fabric softener, dust on orange-scented foot powder, scrub with mountain-fresh dishwashing liquid, slather on apricot hand lotion, drive with pine-scented air fresheners. And that's just the morning ritual.

Am I exaggerating?  It's no exaggeration that some people smell like a toxic waste dump with this mix of poison and they don't even notice it.



The Toxic Waste Dump

Maybe manufacturers need to offer scent coordinates so all your personal products match? I have yet to see anyone offering their services as a scent manager, someone trained to coordinate the multitudes of toxic chemicals we might use in one day. Of course, the job itself would be a health hazard so it's not a profession one would expect to retire from in twenty years.

Oh! Don't forget to bath in some PERFUME while you're at it!

How many scents do you offgas each day?

Alternative Beauty Products

If housecleaning isn't enough to overload women, then add an overabundance of beauty products. That should do the trick! What I don't understand is why are women expected to use cosmetics and men aren't? The male of every other species is the one that has the fancy plumage or attention-getting dances for mating. And with the feminist movement of the 1970s, why do women STILL feel the need to go to outlandish effort to attract a man? It should be the other way around. My neighbor's husband used to make her wash her hands with bleach. Hmmmm...she's had cancer three times.

Mary's goat

Soap Mary's Milk Monsters soap is my favorite. It does have sodium hydroxide (lye/caustic soda) which is the basic ingredient of old-fashioned soap, but little else in the way of poison. It is rare that I can find an unscented soap that doesn't give me grief. It is sold by Mary who is the cutest little goat wrangler I've ever seen in my life. She looks like a fairytale character. Mary and her mother sell goat milk products at a local farmers' market. You can even get a soap that is vegan without the goat milk, but Mary claims the goat milk makes your skin smooth. She's so adorable. See her blog to the right on my blog list.

Shampoo  Planet Dishwashing Liquid, the all-purpose miracle soap! Another option is aluminum-free baking soda. Put about 1/2 cup of baking soda in a small bowl with just enough water to make a paste. Wet your hair, apply soda paste, scrub through, rinse. I do an extra rinse with vinegar water. When I first read about this on a minimalist blog I didn't think it would work very well, but this is what was used for centuries before fancy products replaced it. Your hair comes out squeaky clean.

I wash my hair about once every three weeks. I'm sure to some that is unimaginable! When I was in high school I read an article in Glamour magazine about a girl who quit washing her hair because she was having skin issues. She said it made her crazy for a week and then all was fine. Since she wasn't stripping it every day with harsh chemicals, it grew full and healthy. It was as if her body balanced itself and all the oily greasiness went away along with her skin problems! That left a huge impression on me for the rest of my life although it took becoming chemically sensitive to stop washing my hair so much.

Me (London, 1979)

Hair conditioner  Organic coconut oil. Just a tiny bit. When it's not on my hair or skin, it's in the frying pan.

Beauty Parlor and Hair Styling I cut my own hair in my bathroom. It's short so I don't even have to use a blow dryer anymore. No poofing or lacquering short hair either. I've heard if you want to sculpt your hair, use whipped up egg whites. That's what British punk rockers used to get their long hair to stand straight up. Homemade mousse.

Make-Up  Zilch.  On occasion I use Nanak's Lip Smoothee for chap stick. Does that count as make-up? I don't think so. Nanak's has Vitamin E in it. I recently read Vitamin E is made with gluten and if you are on a gluten-free diet (which I am) you shouldn't even wear make-up with gluten. Nearly all cosmetics and lotions have Vitamin E as an ingredient. We are a vitamin-crazed society and manufacturer's think if they put that on the label, people associate it with health. Another marketing ploy by the money-makers.

Moisturizer/Lotion/Suntan Lotion  Coconut oil. Makes me feel like I'm on a Hawaiian beach. I don't use moisturizers often since I don't wear cosmetics so I don't use harsh soaps to scrub off the first layer of skin to get the chemicals off.

Aloha!

Deodorant  Vinegar for smell, baking soda for wetness. I've tried some non-toxic deodorants and none of them work as well as vinegar and baking soda.

Bath water conditioning  Sometimes I put vinegar in my bath. The acid is good for your skin. Sometimes I put Epsom salts in my bath. Both are good for muscle pains. (Note: After years of vinegar baths I'm noticing my bathtub finish is wearing thin. From the vinegar? Maybe....this is a warning.)

Toothpaste  I use a toothbrush and water, and I floss every day. Once a week or so I brush with baking soda for a scrub. Toothpaste is loaded with chemicals: fluoride, whiteners, dyes, flavorings, preservatives,  and SUGAR! It used to be camouflaged as sucrose in hopes stupid consumers wouldn't recognize it. How many people look at ingredients labels on a tube of toothpaste?  I'm constantly baffled by the lack of common sense. Or was this a ploy by the American Dental Association to guarantee returning patients? Lately manufacturers have been replacing sugar with sorbitol and saccharin. Are those any safer in my mouth? No.

My old dentist used to always ask if I drank coffee or tea. I didn't. When I stopped using toothpaste, the plaque build-up decreased.  Now I only go to the dentist about once every five years because it's hard to find one that doesn't stink and I like to avoid being radiated so often.  They love to radiate! $$ I also refuse tooth polish with flavored chemicals. Like the AMA, dentists can get really testy if you aren't spending money like a normal American.

Some people use soap. Another use for Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid, the miracle soap? Eeewww! That's where I draw the line. The childhood threat of getting your mouth washed out with soap still haunts me.

If you haven't seen The Story of Cosmetics, check it out: http://storyofcosmetics.org Very cute and informative.

And that's a savings of... Getting rid of cosmetics, make-up removers, make-up tools, shampoos, conditioners, hair gel, hair mousse, hair dyes, hair bleaches, hair appliances, hair accessories, toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, Ivory soap, bath oil beads, bubble bath, lotions, fingernail polish, and fingernail polish remover and I can afford to buy quality, organic food!

Congratulations! It's a Broccoli!!

I love gardening and growing things. It must be like parenting only without the screaming, messy diapers and snotty noses. My plant children aren't going to grow up to be pregnant teenagers or flunk out of school either. They will never be drug addicts or alcoholics and they will give back as much as I give.  I get to experience the joy of conception, nurture their health, watch them develop and protect them from evil things once they are out in the world. An almost stress-free parenting experience. And then I get to eat them, like a good parent should.

In February, I plant my first indoor starts: basil, Roma tomatoes and grape tomatoes. I use soil starter in egg shells placed in egg cartons under grow lights.

Egg shells as containers give the little babies lots of calcium which makes them strong. Last year I did an experiment growing six basil plants in egg shells and six in normal cardboard type containers. In six weeks the egg shell plants were three times as big and continued to be fuller, greener, and pest and disease free for the rest of the growing season. Egg shells are free if you eat or bake with eggs. Crack the egg open at the top to leave lots of whole shell. Place them back in their cartons.

Once they have dried, use a very sharp sewing needle and pierce a small hole at the bottom for drainage. The shells are very brittle so do be careful or they will shatter.

The egg shells are filled with organic, sterilized soiless starter made from vermiculite, sphagnum moss and perlite which is very fine. It is sprayed with water until it soaks up moisture. I plant one seed in each egg shell and place them back in the egg carton for stability. They grow under grow lights that are turned on in the morning and off at night. I watch to make sure the soil doesn't dry out and spray them with water several times a day.

The Nursery

Broccoli is the first up every year. It only takes about three days for them to peak their little bald heads out of the dirt.  They are fairly low maintenance, too. Good little babies!

So precious...

Basil needs to be supervised constantly so the soil doesn't get dry, but not too wet. When a second pair of leaves grow, I use my fingers and pinch off the top growth. This makes their stems stronger.

Tomatoes need to be watched so they don't get spindly and leggy growing too fast to reach the light. Keep the light as close to the egg shells as possible to prevent this, but be sure it's a proper grow light and not a heat lamp as the plants need to stay cool.

When their little bodies are about an inch tall, I feed them mild nutrients either organic or fish fertilizers. If you feel too much nitrogen to tomatoes, they don't produce fruit.

When the plants get too big for their little egg wombs, I transplant them to a larger container, use regular potting soil, continuing their care until they are ready to venture into the world.

When the time comes for transplanting into the garden, I "harden" the plants off by putting them on a wind-free porch in the sun every day for about three days. This gets them use to being outside and slight breezes will strengthen their stems so they will be strong enough for windier days. Broccoli loves cold weather so they are transplanted outside in March. Tomatoes and basil do not like it too cold. In fact, under 55 degrees and basil will turn black and possibly die. Very temperamental. As long as it's warm enough, basil then becomes low maintenance.

I repeat this process for indoor starts planted in April (squashes and beans) and May (sunflowers). Everything else gets planted directly into the ground in the middle of May.

I think I should throw myself a baby shower...feel free to send some gifts. :)

Alternative Cleaning Products

Women are statistically more often afflicted with chemical sensitivity because of our traditional roles as house cleaners. Because of this social history, we have been and still are exposed to some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet. I, personally, would like a new role.



I'd rather be an heiress.

Laundry  I am laundry-impaired. Always have been. Unfortunately, unless I win the Lotto someday, doing laundry is a lifestyle requirement I haven't be able to ignore. I use Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid for soap. It bubbles too much so I am careful not to put too much in the washer. Planet laundry detergent makes me wheeze so it's OUT. 


Vinegar is added for germ killing and dye setting with dark clothes, and hydrogen peroxide for germ killing with light clothes.

Borax is used for really dirty stuff, but nothing that I have to wear or sleep on as it's too strong.

Every now and then I use bleach for whites. Because I dislike dull, dingy whites and laundresses needs to use bleach to get them bright, I have few whites in my life. To use bleach, I need to seal off the laundry room, open the windows and wash the load. Then wash it again without bleach two or three times more to get the stink out. (UPDATE: NEW DISCOVERY: Vinegar neutralizes bleach. During the rinse cycle, put on a mask, open the washing machine and dump in about 1/4 gallon of vinegar. Whites come out white without any bleach smell! Same if you inadvertently get bleach on your hands while adding it - wash them in vinegar.)  I've tried hydrogen peroxide for bleach - it's never worked for me, but again, I'm cursed when it comes to laundry skills so maybe it was just me.

I did recently discover ammonia. I guess you are supposed to use it for oils instead of bleach. Am I the only one that didn't know this? As long as I wear a mask, seal the room off, open the windows, I'm fine with ammonia and the smell is gone by the end of the rinse so unlike bleach, I don't have to do multiple washings.  (Ammonia is also used to excite a compost pile into faster composting.)

No dryers here. They damage clothes and waste electricity.

Buying anything new involves washing it multiple times before it's worn. Sheets or other bedding I must wash a minimum of ten times before I can go near them let alone sleep with them due to the formaldehyde and other chemicals manufacturers use to deter mildew in storage.  I opt for organic products whenever possible, but they are very expensive. Most bedding I get is from estate sales, brand new, still in the package, for $3 to $10. Hard to pass up. This is how I end up with whites or dark colors and need to figure out how to wash them safely.

I also avoid buying anything from China as products from China tend to be over treated with chemicals. I never buy synthetic fabrics which are made from petrochemicals. Just the feel of synthetics make me cringe and they always need fabric softener or fabric sheets to stop static electricity and that horrid cling. <shiver>  I stick with mostly cottons and wools, organic if I can find it.



The All-Purpose Miracle Soap

Oven Cleaner Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid, sometimes non-aluminum baking soda, always a pumice scouring stick that gets off any baked on gunk.

Car Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid. It's environmentally safe.



Toilets Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid and Borax. For a good scrubbing or  iron stain removal, I use a pumice scouring stick.


Baths and Showers Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid for bubble scrubbing, vinegar to kill any residue, germs and mildew. (Don't use vinegar on marble - it eats it.)


Windows Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid to scrub off dirt and grime, then hot water and a little bit of vinegar for rinsing. Wipe dry with a rag.

Dishes I use Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid for basic bubbly soap and aluminum-free baking soda or scouring pads for scrubbing.

Carpets I don't have toxic carpets, only wood and tile floors and cotton throw rugs. But on occasion I rent one of those carpet cleaners and do furniture or the carpeting inside my van. I use SafeChoice Carpet Shampoo which is chemical free and odorless. I bought two gallons of this stuff two years ago and I've only gone through a half a gallon so far. First, I rinse out the rental cleaner with vinegar and water. Then I add some shampoo, turn it on, and wash nothing as I flush out residue left from the chemical shampoo. When I think it's properly cleaned and rinsed, I add the SafeChoice shampoo like normal and shampoo. If I ever run out of this stuff, guess what I'll be using? Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid. :)

Floors Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid and peppermint oil with a bucket and a scrub brush. Then I rinse and polish with a towel. I can tolerate small doses of peppermint oil. I use it because spiders hate it and I hate spiders.

No spiders...

Deodorizers and Air Fresheners These products are so incredibly toxic I don't know how anyone tolerates them. Instead of chemicals, I boil some cinnamon or cloves in a pan and everything smells like cinnamon rolls. When I have spider-treated my house with peppermint oil, people say it smells wonderful, but I don't tolerate essential oils much so I avoid using them. Although essential oils are professed to be "natural", jacking up a smell five million times its natural scent is anything but natural. I also use non-aluminum baking soda in a bowl to suck up smells, vinegar in a bowl to rid a room of paint fumes, and freshly ground coffee beans for other, more serious offgassing issues.

Wood Polish I don't have a lot of bare wood in my house, but I have used olive oil and coconut oil on furniture and wooden things. I read that's what was used in history.

My personal stash....

I love Planet Ultra Dishwashing Liquid. It's the only soap-like product I can tolerate. I emailed the company and told them how much I loved it and they mailed me coupons. It is expensive, and will cost you anywhere from $3.99 to $4.15 a bottle. I wait until it's on sale at $2.99, buy a case, and get another 10% off the whole lot. I also use Planet to wash wounds and kill garden pests!

So...how many different products does one really need to clean?  If you eliminate Pinesol, Lysol, Windex, Tidy Bowl, Mr. Clean, Easy Off, Shout, Comet, Dawn, Pledge, Ajax, Downy, Fabreze, Glade, Renuzit, Bounce, and Tide (I can't even do unscented Tide - it stinks!),  how much poisonous exposure would you avoid per day? How much money would you save? Probably enough to splurge for some organic food!

Diet and Diets

Most of us were raised on the Standard American Diet (SAD) filled with chemically-grown and manufactured foods. Junk food. Fast food. Getting rid of unnecessary chemicals means eating only organically grown produce, organically, grass-fed meats with no additives for preservation or taste enhancing.

So many people have said to me, "I don't see the difference in organic versus chemically-grown food other than the price." Well, these critics aren't chemically sensitive...yet! There are some non-organic foods that have made me violently ill with stomach or intestinal cramps, headaches/migraines, rashes, nausea, dizziness. Even if you don't react to non-organic food, you still need to reduce the load in your body. Going organic is a step in the right direction.

Organic, whole food is pricy, no doubt, but as you make other changes to your lifestyle you'll find it'll all balances out. For instance, the amount of money I used to spend on cosmetics, facial cleansers and make-up removers, hair products, beauty parlor visits, soaps, lotions, detergents and toxic household cleaners would feed a small, third world country. I'd much rather buy quality food that is an investment in my health and in my future.

In addition to an organic diet, there are many other diets to consider:

Sugar-free Sugar isn't good for anyone. Besides weight gain, it also screws with your blood sugar levels. Because sugar has no nutrients and we need nutrients in order to digest, it sucks the nutrients out of your body in order to be digested. If you have a cold or illness and eat sugar, you'll have a really hard time getting over it.

Dairy-free Dairy products like milk, cheese, cream, ice cream, cottage cheese, and cream cheese  create inflammation and are difficult to digest for most. Non-organic dairy products have all kinds of chemical additives from artificial nutrients to preservatives, not to mention the antibiotics and growth hormones given to the animals so they may produce more.

Gluten-free  I've read most people are gluten sensitive in some way. Our bodies just aren't good at digesting grains. In addition, leaky gut is caused by undigested foods, usually grains, and bacteria permeating the intestinal tract and it is believed by many those toxic compounds are then leaked into our bloodstream causing a host of health problems including chemical sensitivity. And gluten is in nearly everything from cosmetics to tuna to chili powder! It's really sneaky.

GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) Diet This diet eliminates grains, dairy and sugars in order to heal leaky gut.

Paleo (caveman) diet Similar to gluten-free and GAPS in eliminating grains, sugars and dairy and going back to the natural diet of our ancestors. No processed foods, no chemically-grown foods, no genetically-modified foods.

Raw food diet This diet involves eating only raw food as high temperatures kill the nutrients and enzymes making food less beneficial. Raw food is easier to digest and more nutritious.  Any diet should consist of at least 75% raw foods for optimum health.

Juicing  Fresh, organic fruit and vegetable juices are like blood transfusions - liquid nutrients. And they taste so good! Beet and apple juice are natural liver detoxers. Fresh lemonade is heavenly. My favorite is carrot juice. There is some warning about the sugar content of fruit juice especially if you have any blood sugar issues, and juicing isn't really "natural" as it removes all the good pulp fiber from the plant. But it's fabulous!

Rotation diets For anyone who is finding themselves sensitive to any foods, be sure to rotate the foods you can tolerate so you don't develop a sensitivity. If you eat too much of one thing, your body starts seeing it as an "invader" triggering an immune response. Try to eat foods no more than once every four days so you have a variety.

There are also low-histamine diets, low-oxalate diets, low-salicylate diets, anti-Candida diets, anti-inflammatory diets, etc., etc. You name it, it's out there, but if you start mixing them your list of what you can eat gets very small!

Currently I'm doing a mix of the GAPS and Paleo diets with a Hashimoto twist. (It sounds like an alcoholic beverage!) No sugar, grains, dairy, tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes, soy, iodine,  high-glycemic fruits along with all kinds of other weird rules. What that leaves are some meats, some veggies, some fruits, some nuts with coconut milk, olive and coconut oils. I'm being creative with meals, but I'm damn hungry all the time. I'm not really hungry,  just unsatisfied. I really miss the freedom of snacking.

There are also a number of cleansing diets designed to help the detoxification process:

Master Cleanse, or lemonade diet This lemonade is absolutely yummy made with fresh, organic lemon juice, Grade B organic maple syrup and a dash of cayenne pepper. Drink only this non-stop for a day or a month, alternating with herbal teas. The recipe and directions are online with many people gushing about healing miracles. It was yummy, but I got really tired of just lemonade. I wasn't hungry, just bored. You must follow the directions especially  coming off of it to avoid gastro-intestinal problems.

Liver and gall bladder cleanses It involves drinking lots of apple juice (a natural liver detoxer), grapefruit or lemon juice with 1/2 cup of olive oil. I know that sounds gross. It is. Hold your nose and drink it down. What's worse is drinking Epsom salts. Eeeww.  I did this once with great results. This is also a natural remedy for gall stones and kidney stones and is much cheaper and safer than surgery.  AND you won't be missing any body parts in the end!  Get proper directions online.

Fasting  Total water fasts for one day to two months.  This sounds crazy, I know, but fasting has been practiced for centuries. Socrates use to require it of his students as it cleans the body and opens the brain. One theory is all animals stop eating when they are sick to rest their bodies in order to heal. This makes sense to me. I think only the human species feeds itself to death. I tried it following Loren Lockman's protocol which he uses at his Tanglewood fasting clinic. Lockman claims with periodic fasting and a raw food diet, he cured himself of fibromyalgia.  It is said you stop craving food and stop being hungry after a few days. At day four I thought I was starving! I went right into a raw food diet which also says after seven days you stop being hungry. At twenty one days I still felt like I was starving. BUT I have to say, in the end, I was less reactive to chemicals and felt better. An option to water fasts are juice fasts, but again, the sugar content in fresh juices are a concern for many.

These are mere ideas to consider. With any special diets or dietary changes, it would be advisable to get specific directions online so you don't hurt yourself or seek the advice of a doctor or dietician. Not that I'm saying doctors or dieticians would even know about half these diets or approve of them. My personal rule is: follow your instincts and what makes your body feel good, unless it tells you to eat chocolate everyday then assume your body has been hijacked. Addictions will make you crave what they want, but in most cases your body will tell you what it wants.

What kind of diets have helped reduce your chemical overload?

What were your most difficult sacrifices?
What do you miss the most!?

Reducing the Toxic Load

The key to chemical sensitivity relief is to reduce the toxic overload. As I mentioned in the "WHY ME?" post on causation theories, most of us are unable to detox the garbage we accumulate in our bodies out of our bodies fast enough. Normally this is done through perspiration, urination, and digestive elimination, but we are overloaded so it's not happening fast enough nor efficiently enough.  How to reduce this toxic overload falls into two main categories:  avoidance and detoxification.

Poisoning the Moon

Avoiding chemicals is, to put it mildly,  nearly impossible. They have infiltrated every aspect of our lives and are carried to the nether regions on air and water. Even Antarctica has levels of toxins in the ice! The mission is to do as much avoiding as possible. This will involve a whole lot of change in dietary practices, personal habits, and environmental exposures. Some of these steps will be easy, and others will involve a lifestyle overhaul. Detoxification involves doing some strange things to assist your various body systems in their own cleansing mechanisms.  In summary,  avoid putting more chemicals in and detox the chemicals out.

These are some ideas that have helped me:

Eating organic, whole foods instead of the Standard American Diet of chemically-enhanced junk food, fast food and processed food.


Stop using all chemical household cleaners replacing them with less toxic alternatives.

Stop using poisonous beauty products - go natural.


Questioning every product purchase and opting for less toxic alternatives.

Quitting a toxic job and replacing it with a less toxic alternative.


Moving from the city to the country.


Replacing ignorant, smelly people with smart, respectful, fragrance-free friends.


Replacing smelly entertainment with less toxic alternatives.


Regularly detoxing with special diets and body cleansing methods.


Buy a more environmentally-friendly car. (I haven't done this yet, but it's on my  dream list!)

You are thinking, "I can't do this." Yes, you can.  Don't look at the whole picture. Do the easy stuff first and tackle it step by step - one piece at a time.

Popular Protocols: Doctor Play

Here are some other ways doctor practice with MCS patients:

IV treatments - Same as supplement therapy only using a direct IV line right into your bloodstream. I've done some minor IVs like magnesium pushes. It seems very unnatural and incredibly invasive to me. Most patients I've watched do this have no complaints, unless no one could find a suitable vein. The few who were crying in pain during the drip left a lasting impression. Not a fan.

Immunotherapy  These are vaccine-like injections are related to the provocation neutralization testing results. Toxins are shot into your system with the premise you should become desensitized to the substance in small doses. Again, very invasive, but hey, if it works for deadly diseases like cholera and malaria, why not toxins?

Bioenergy sublingual treatments Supplements and extracts are used in small doses based on your bioenergy testing results to create desensitization. Very much like immunotherapy except through the digestive tract instead of injected. I tried one of these and I had the opposite effect with symptoms much worse than normal. I was told the dosage needed to be adjusted.  


Energy treatments  The patient lays on a massage table and the practitioner holds their hands over you and does secret stuff to unblock and rebalance your energy flow. Only twice did I feel like it did something. Once I experienced shooting pains down my left arm right after the session making me think I was having a heart attack. The second time the practitioner told me not to do any detoxification that evening or the energy flow would compound it. I forgot those instructions, did some detox cleanses and I had uncontrollable diarrhea in the middle of the night.  Oops! He was right! However, I never felt like the treatments relieved or eliminated the chemical sensitivity nor did my health improve in any way. I must be outstandingly blocked.

NAET (Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Treatment) This is very much related to the bioenergy testing, pulse testing, muscle testing, energy treatments and immunotherapy. Although I have not had the whole set for chemical sensitivity, I will share my limited experiences.

I knew a doctor who gave a talk on NAET to a group of nurses where I worked and he used me as his demonstration guinea pig. He said most people are allergic to eggs and had me hold a vial formulated to represent eggs. As I held tight, he did whatever he was doing, magically moving hands around and such. I have no idea if it worked as I didn't think I had a problem with eggs. However those bioenergy tests told me I was/am allergic to fertilized eggs?? Maybe I don't have reactions to eggs because I had this done? But I didn't have egg issues before either.

About a year later I was having a bad reaction after going to a funeral (formaldehyde, pesticide-laden flowers, perfumes) and I went to see this doctor again as he was also a chiropractor. I tried to tell him it was the chemicals that were making my head and spine swell causing the excruciating neck pain. I was hoping he could give me an adjustment to ease the pressure.

"No, no," he said. "You are grieving." He badgered me into another NAET treatment for grief. I wasn't grieving. I tried to tell him that but in the end I had hoped maybe he was right and this treatment would take all the pain away. It didn't. What a waste. It kind of put me off the whole NAET thing. I think some doctors get blinded by their enthusiasm for these odd treatments, they refuse to see anything else including the patient. As it is, in all my years and research, I've never met anyone who had benefited from the NAET. As I recall the NAET treatments are very expensive. I'm still open minded, but I'd want a money-back guarantee.

 

Heavy metal chelation using DMPS or EDTA - This is a detoxification IV therapy using incredibly smelly stuff that I'd never in my life trust being siphoned directly into the blood stream to flush (chelate) heavy metals out. Both substances report a host of side effects and it is recommended this is only used as a last resort. I don't get the impression it is used a last resort for most doctors. I've never done this. I've only smelled it and that was good enough for me.


Mercury amalgam removals - It is believed the mercury we have in our cavity fillings are poisoning us. Every time we breathe or eat/drink anything hot they offgas mercury into our bodies contributing to our overload. I've checked into this and they often use plastics to replace the mercury. Hmmm...not sure if plastic in my mouth would be any less toxic?  Still, I've read some people claim removing these heavy metals have made all the difference and I'm sure it contributes toward reducing the toxic overload.


I don't deny some of these treatments do affect our bodies, but I've never personally met anyone who said any of these protocols reduced or eliminated chemical sensitivity specifically.  I've read anonymous reviews claiming people have had miraculous improvement. Are patients really writing the reviews or are doctors advertising their services? Most often I hear from people, "Well, I think it helped...maybe?" Often MCSers will see benefits because of the placebo effect.  We are so desperate for answers we are willing to believe anything works even when it doesn't. Until there is a money-back guarantee or if you have unlimited funds, I wouldn't waste the money.


As cynical as I am, I would love to hear from others who have had positive experiences. Over the years I heard only two success stories. One woman professed a 95% reduction in exposure side effects by being on a raw food diet. Another said after numerous Traditional Chinese Medicine treatments having to do with balancing the north, south, east and west she was able to go to the theater and church for the first time in years without problems. She said the key was finding a quality Chinese medicine practitioner.


Do you have any experiences with these treatments? Any of them work?

Service Day

A few years ago President Obama declared Martin Luther King Day as Service Day. As someone who is chemically sensitive, I am limited in my service options so I considered in what ways would I be able to volunteer and still avoid exposure to chemicals. Volunteering with people and feeling that solidarity and camaraderie would be lovely, but OUT. People stink.

As I pondered my options that day, I went for a walk at the park located down by the river and a block away from my home. At the far end of the park is very short wetlands trail. If I look up at the cliff, I can see my house. The rusty cans, toilet paper, cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers and used condoms littering the area called to me. (Yes! I said used condoms! Litterbugs are sex fiends.) My service project was born. I adopted the wetlands trail.

The Wetlands Trail

I try to go down at least once a year and do a little clean up. Sporting two layers of rubber gloves and carrying  a long weapon-stick in one hand and a large garbage bag in the other, I trudge through the thicket. Litterbugs are shifty. They do their damnest to hide their garbage by throwing it in the bushes, blackberry stickers,  marsh grasses, and in the water. I wear my indestructible rubber rain boots so I can go nearly anywhere. During the winter is the best time for service work because the foliage has died back and you can see the garbage better. Unfortunately, if surrounded by a prison of thick blackberry vines, the trash can be impossible to retrieve even with my weapon-stick. All I can do is stare and feel frustrated.

Garbage in Prison

The first year I took a small plastic grocery bag and had to come back for more. I ended up filling four of them with lots of old cans, large pieces of plastic, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, used condoms and a deflated soccer ball. I rolled an old tire out of the swamp and up the hill. Before I left I stopped to visit with the litterbugs fishing at the dock and gave them a piece of my mind about using the trash can right next to them instead of throwing it in the bushes. I should have lectured them on using the bushes for a toilet, too. I draw the line at picking up used toilet paper.


This year's adventure was strangely different. The wetlands sign had been removed and the trail was overgrown suggesting the city is no longer maintaining it. They also removed the garbage can at the dock. No one used it anyway. I think the overgrowth discourages litterbugs and sex fiends. I filled only a half of a large garbage bag, and no used condoms. I did find a huge piece of old plastic to drag out. SCORE!

River view from the trail.

It amazes me people respect nature so little they don't care where they throw their garbage. It pollutes the river, kills the fish, injures wildlife, and I can't even imagine the damage those used condoms do to the environment!

I do have a confession - I always forget about Service Day until President's Day. I get confused and think MLK Day is in February maybe because February is Black History Month. Oh well, better late than never. Besides it's difficult to pick up garbage in the snow.

What do you do for service?

Popular Protocols: Pill Pushing

I believe our bodies are always in a state of healing, always moving toward optimum health. This is what bodies do naturally regardless of what we do to circumvent the process. I read every two years we have a brand new body as it takes about that long to regenerate everything. I'm fairly certain it is the belief of most doctors our bodies aren't doing it fast enough so they need an extra push...with pills. Pharmaceuticals or supplements, it doesn't matter. Most are chemicals. All are drugs.

Yum! Yum! Why eat when we can take pills?

Americans love convenience. Why do the hard work when you can just pop a pill? I shouldn't even need to discuss the dangers of pharmaceuticals, but so many people blindly take them without much thought to the small-print warnings on the labels. All one needs to do is watch the news for another celebrity who has died from a pharmaceutical overdose. Nearly all drugs have a history of emergency room visits for overdosing, even the over-the-counter type you can get without a prescription. Pharmaceuticals are chemicals. They will add to the chemical overload your body is already experiencing.

Notes on pharmaceuticals and chemical sensitivity:  If one of your side effects is respiratory dysfunction, the easy assumption most conventional doctors will make is it's asthma and they will want to further poison you with inhalers. In addition to the drug, most inhalers use a chemical propellant and for the MCS patient, this will often make breathing more difficult and painful. Another common prescription is anti-depressants. A well-known side effect of anti-depressants is suicidal tendencies.  Does that make sense? The chemical overload is messing with our brain function. It doesn't seem rational to me to add more chemicals that might make it all worse.

What worries me more are the over-the-counter supplements that holistic doctors prescribe and anyone can buy and take freely. And they do, usually without any thought to how the particular supplement is manufactured, in what ratios and dosages, and how it might affect the natural chemistry of the body. Doctors rarely confess that many of the nutrients in the mix can negatively react with one another. Maybe they don't know? Maybe they don't care?

For instance, if you take too much vitamin C, it affects your body's ability to absorb iron. How many people eat flavored, synthetic vitamin C like it's candy and assume it's good for you? Synthetic vitamin E affects your ability to utilize real vitamin E. Calcium not in proper ratios with magnesium affects the absorption of both. The premise behind these issues is if you are giving your body extra synthetic nutrients,  it gets lazy and starts using the synthetics instead of the natural ones, but it can't utilize the synthetic ones as well.  Then the body shuts down its own absorption/utilization processes of natural nutrients.  I just recently read if you are taking calcium you have a higher risk of heart attack. Detoxification theories suggest taking all these extra synthetic supplements makes  your body work twice as hard to get rid of the excess when we should put our energy toward healing instead. These are just a few examples of the bad chemistry of unnatural supplements. 

What I want to know is how do manufacturers know the proper amounts and ratios for MY body specifically? I can't be the same as everyone else on the planet, but this is the assumption. Still, every doctor I've ever seen in my life wants to force a vitamin down my throat and not one of them can tell me the side effects of taking these drugs. They claim they are all safe. Hardly.

And what about the additives and fillers used to make these pills? Magnesium stearate, calcium stearate, silica, soy lecithin, cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, glycerin, gelatin. Isn't silica in ceramics? Synthetic forms of nutrients with industrial strength fillers...it makes no sense. Eat some fresh fruit instead.

I grew up working in health food stores so for years I was brainwashed into believing because of modern agricultural processes, we MUST take supplements because there are not enough nutrients in the soil to produce nutritious foods.  REALLY? If there weren't enough nutrients in the soil, the plants wouldn't grow! It makes you wonder who started that rumor and what were they trying to sell? Supplements, you think?

If you are eating a healthy diet of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, you should be getting enough nutrients. Add some organically grass-fed, steroid-free fresh meats and you'll get more. If you aren't digesting the nutrients well, that is a whole other health issue you need to address, but as I started this post, our bodies WANT to heal themselves. Give them time, proper diets and health lifestyles, they will.

Herbs, on the other hand, ARE drugs and have been used as drugs for centuries. Yet so many people take herbal supplements everyday as if they are food stuffs with no safety issues.  After all, herbs are available on the shelves for anyone to buy and the FDA hasn't restricted them so they must be safe, right? We don't even need a prescription, just money. We are far too trusting of the FDA to protect us from everything. Many herbal drugs react with pharmaceuticals, too, so that has to be a common-sense warning. I read once no one should take an herb for more than two weeks at a time, yet manufacture advertising  promotes eating Echinacea non-stop during the winter to fight off colds. We need to stop being so naive and instead start using our brains to protect ourselves instead relying on a steady diet of pills.

MY PERSONAL DRUG STASH: Aside from my lofty opinions and soap-box lecture on the evils of pills, I do understand when push comes to shove and a person is so miserable with illness or pain they would do anything, drugs have their place. I have emergency relief drugs I take only if absolutely necessary:

Benadryl  This over-the-counter allergy medication seems to be the go-to drug to give to anyone so I've always been against how easy it is for everyone to trust taking it or giving to their kids. However, one day while I was surfing the internet looking for clues I came across a woman's comment on how she uses Benadryl when her brain swells and becomes inflamed due to a bad exposure. Whoa! She went on to explain about the severe mood swings and neck pain, basically describing those scary ultradian cycles I have experienced. This to me was a lifesaver, literally. So my next bad exposure I tried it. It worked! Benadryl is an anti-histamine and controls swelling.  It also makes my ears ring, is dehydrating, and knocks me out for hours so I can only take it at night.

Ibuprofen  Migraines are a bitch. I can tolerate one for about 24 hours before I realize it's affecting my ability to function and then I give up. I take only one which only reduces the pain slightly, enough so I can get out of bed. I know what this drug can do to a person's liver so I avoid partaking as much as possible and only when desperate.

Dr. Shulze's Intestinal Formula #1  Dr. Shulze is into herbal dextoxification programs and through his website www.herbdoc.com and mail catalog he is willing to sell you any remedy for any bodily affliction. He's a wheeler and dealer, too, like an old-fashioned snake oil salesman. I love listening to him. He believes if you keep your colon clean, then your other detox organs (liver, gall bladder, bladder, skin) can clean your body properly and efficiently. His theories make a lot of sense. I have done his intestinal cleansing program and it works fine. I wouldn't make a habit out of it as I think one needs to eat right to properly motivate the intestines, but in an emergency situation, I use this formula to expedite the process. Any time I have a bad exposure whether it's toxic air or something I ate, this is my first line of defense: get it out of my body. Whoosh!  He used to give out a free tape recording of his philosophy one could order off his website. It's hilarious!

In my part of the country we suffer from solar deficiency so I'm buying into the fact I don't get enough sunshine on my face. My labs are showing low levels of Vitamin D so lately I've been testing Vitamin D to see if it makes any difference. I'm not having any side effects, which is rare with a supplement, so we'll see what happens. Regardless, it's a temporary test. It would take a heck of a lot of misery for me to take a pill every day for any reason and I'm not there yet. (Update: Even if I use Vitamin D as a moisturizer my neck and spine start hurting. I think it's the glycerin, but I don't see how lanolin is good for anyone to eat and it's the source for this natural Vitamin D supplement. I also read Vitamin D can cause kidney stones which is not a selling point. I've been eating lots of eggs and getting out in the sun as often as possible and my labs have improved.)

Do you take anything that helps alleviate your chemical sensitivity?

Do the supplements you take really help or are they contributing to the load?