The Advantages of Being Chemically Sensitive

As MCSers we tend to focus on the negative: what we have to sacrifice to live in the world, how lousy we feel, and how it has changed our lives. Believe it or not there ARE advantages to being chemically sensitive!

Appreciation for Health  Think back ten or twenty years ago when you took your health for granted.  Moments, days or weeks when we feel good, it's definitely appreciated!

Hyper-Immunity I don't get sick because my immune system is overactive constantly battling chemical exposure. No colds, viruses, sore throats, flu. When everyone around me is feeling lousy, looking miserable, lying in bed, sipping chicken soup and wheezing through congestion telling me it's something that's going around, I can silently say to myself, Hooray MCS - it won't be coming around here.

Education on Health and Healthy Living Becoming chemically sensitive makes one search for answers in hopes of finding solutions. We study information on diet, environment, chemicals, medicine, health, home improvements, gardening, etc. etc. etc. We expand our knowledge on how to live healthy and how to heal. We are highly motivated to finding answers. Would I have taken the time to care so much about health and alternative medicine before I became chemically sensitive? Maybe, but I doubt it.

There are so many out there who still don't have a clue when it comes to the consequences of chemicals, Today, for example, I visited my local hardware store. As I waited, the person at the checkout counter next to me was naively buying Roundup. I had just posted my Save the Bees blog following it with the article on Roundup research and Monsanto revenge. I wanted to point and scream, OH GOD, DON'T YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT POISON? IT'S KILLING BEES! DON'T BUY IT! Would she have cared? I'm pretty sure she would have laughed. The whole store would have laughed and chalked me up as being deranged. 

People who wear perfumes, eat junk food, smoke, do drugs, dye their hair, use high-VOC paints, and kill things with pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are self-poisoning on a daily basis. I see these people and wonder how it will affect their health long term. Will they suffer from some related disease later in life? An autoimmune disease? Cancer? They might not care now, but they will regret their bad habits when their health starts deteriorating whining about what they wish they would have known.

Organic Food Movement Indoctrination  Same educational benefits. Learning about healthy eating requires understanding the difference between conventionally-poison-grown food and organically grown food. This also involves reading labels, appreciating local farmers, visiting farmers' markets, and expecting a higher level of quality, freshness and safety for all food.

Minimalism I can't buy junk made from cheap, toxic materials or chemically-saturated products. I can't shop freely. With shopping choices limited, I've been forced into the minimalist movement.  In learning to appreciate my situation, I make a conscious effort not buying material things that will end up at the dump someday, I am very picky about where I shop and support only those businesses that encourage sustainable practices, I buy quality merchandise rather than support a throw-away culture buying cheap junk, and I spend less money. I appreciate not being shackled to material objects or addicted to buying the latest gadget. I value my air space and have garage sales to get rid of stuff.

Environmental Awareness With the minimalist approach in my daily life, I have become more environmentally aware. The chemicals that are poisoning me are poisoning everyone else and the planet. I fix what is broken instead of casually throwing it away and replacing it. I think twice about what I buy and how it affects the water, air, and earth when it's used or after it's at the dump. My chemical sensitivity has made me more conscientious about ecology.

Return to Traditional Lifestyle With a new awareness on healthy living, organic food, and minimalism, this involves taking the time to make home-cooked meals from scratch instead of out of a pre-packaged box. I clean with products my great-great-grandmother probably used. I grow my own food when possible. Who would have thought I'd ever be a gardener?

Random Acts of Violence in Public Places  I'll never be sitting in a packed, midnight screening of any movie and have to worry about being shot to death by some lunatic. I'll never be on an airplane sitting shoulder to shoulder with smelly people as we fly into the side of a building. Granted, with all the crazy people in the world, being chemically sensitive doesn't immune me from other random acts of violence, but because I'm less likely to subject myself to crowds, I'm less likely to be a target for terrorist violence. What an insane world we live in.

Any other advantages I missed?