Dam Perfumes!

They should out-law perfumes and scented products just like they out-lawed smokers!!!! I’m allergic to it and I can’t go ANYWHERE! Urr!! It makes me so mad. I’m sitting in a public library and there is so much perfume in here that I’ve gotten a screaming head-ache and a pissed-off attitude. This perfume allergy causes irritability as well as headaches and fibromyalgia. I can’t work and hence have little money (not enough!) and it’s all because of perfume wearers and all the scented products… shampoo, hair conditioner, hair spray, cologne, aftershave, hand lotion, deoderant and anti-perspirant, laundry soap, dryer anti-static sheets, make-up, sunscreen…and that’s only the main ones on a person’s body as they walk around everywhere, not to mention cleaning products and air fresheners. There are unscented alternatives or better yet, most of these products don’t need to be used at all!

Visiting the Great Basin

I’m travelling now and was visiting the Great Basin area which covers part of Nevada and part of Utah. It is primarily a desert area with pines, juniper, mountain mahogany and more in the mountains and sage and rabbitbrush in the flats. It is an area of low water. Most of the water comes from springs because there is not enough rain or snow to put water into lakes and reservoirs. It’s a beautiful area full of history and wild lands. The problem is that Las Vegas wants to pipe water from the Great Basin for its own selfish needs — lawns, golf courses, fountains, and more development! It seems a crime to steal from another area what little they have so people can live an extravagant and artificial lifestyle! For more information, see http://greatbasinwater.net/   I wish I had some pictures but I don’t even own a digital camera.

Chemicals, skin cancer & chemical sensitivity

Chemical allergy,  chemical sensitivity — it’s all the same to me and probably all the same to your body, but doctors don’t like to call chemical allergies allergies. They say it is not an immune system response, but it is. Most doctors don’t even understand the many ways the immune system works.

But, I have another motive in mind — I think there is a connection between the use of chemicals in lotions, sunscreens and other body products and skin cancer. In Kota’s Catch Blog, I wrote that some chemical preservatives in dog food were known to cause tumors in rats in a laboratory setting. Now, I have another story:

I’ve always been an easy tanner. I would rarely get a sunburn and after a few hours in the sun would tan quickly. I get all kinds of “farmer tans” because of this. A few years ago because of all the media, I began to be concerned about skin cancer and wrinkles since I was past 40 years of age. I began to use sunscreens and lotions more. I used to use a so-called natural unscented lotion, but the ingredients changed as they got rid of the paraben preservatives and the recipes became more chemical. I’m not allergic to parabens, but I am allergic to some chemical preservatives which were common at that time and to fragrance, including masking fragrances. I don’t know if I’m allergic to sunscreens as there is no test for it.

Needless to say, I got “eczema” . And I got rashes, bumps, itches. And my skin became more sensitive to the sun. Some ingredients in lotions are chemicals that allow the skin to absorb the other ingredients more readily. This is bad for chemicals that should not be in the body in the first place, doubly bad if you’re allergic to some of them, and bad for allowing ultra-violet rays into your skin more. There are some other chemicals in lotions that make you more sensitive to sun exposure, also. It got so I wouldn’t tan when I went out, but turned into a mass of freckles. I still didn’t burn too easily, but if my skin was irritated already, exposure to the sun made it more irritated.

I went to a dermatologist (this was the start of how I found out I was allergic to chemicals) — actually, I went to a few. The first result was that I was “sensitive” to the sun and also had “sensitive” skin. My skin does not easily scratch or bruise. I’ve never considered my skin sensitive, yet I remembered feeling sensitive to touch many times before I switched to unscented laundry soap and unscented lotions. I knew already that perfumes “bothered” me — that is, gave me headaches and made my nose run.

I was encouraged by the dermatologists to use products that I later discovered I was allergic to — sunscreens for sun protection and Aveeno lotions. This, of course, made it worse. Then I got a cancer check, some of the darker moles were removed and sent to a lab. They came back negative for cancer but to quote the dermatologist they were classed as “unusual activity”. When, I asked her to clarify she said they were “weird”. She wanted to cut more moles off. I got out of there. [She also said I was a high risk skin cancer person because of my blond hair and blues eyes -- I have brown hair (ok-- gray, mostly) and hazel eyes (green & brown -- but, ok, they've faded to gray-green). But I've never been blond or blued eyed in my life, not even with the help of Clairol!] Soon after, I went back to the allergist and insisted there had to be an allergy. That’s what I intuitively knew. She told me there was a chemical patch test, since I had done all the main food and plant ones. Bingo! Right on the button.

Now, However, I could not find any lotion at all that did not have some masking  fragrance or preservative that I was allergic to, including sunscreens. I avoided the sun and wore a hat and long sleeve shirts. I made my own lotions for my skin. Winter came. The freckles faded. Some of the many little moles seemed to have disappeared, too. I bet if I’d gone back to Ms. Sadist Dermatologist and let her cut me up, my moles would have been normal and no longer “weird”. [They had looked alright to me -- small and regular, but some were dark and there were too many of them.]

Summer came again. I have not used anything chemical on my skin at all. I have not used any sunscreen except occasionally the titanium dioxide ones in over-exposed areas such as neck and shoulders. I used only my own lotions made of water, oils, and beeswax. I used only unscented shampoos and conditioners on my hair and scalp.

Now, by the end of summer, my skin is nice and tan. I did not burn this year. I was not “sensitive” to the sun. I did not get rashes or bumps and itches (except from mosquito bites). I did not freckle. I did not get more moles, in fact, I think there are less of them now, so maybe they were really dark freckles. My skin is back to normal and I think I’m less at risk of skin cancer now than when I was using all those dam commercial chemical products! So! What do you think of that? To go back to the beginning, allergies are inflammations and most doctors now agree that there is a connection between inflammation and cancer. Perhaps that is why sunburn is more risky for causing cancer — sunburns are inflammation. Skin irritations like rashes and eczema are inflammation, also. I’ll let you put two and two together.

Chemical allergies & fibromyalgia

Years ago I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. At the time, I asked the doctor if what I had was caused by environmental toxins, that is, a sensitivity to chemicals. I called it “environmental illness”. She said “No”, that environmental illness did not exist. Years before that, I’d had many problems due to chemicals, but no one said it was an allergy or that the chemicals were causing the problems. I got rashes from the fragrance in laundry soap. I got severe headaches from the formaldehyde in high school biology class. But these things were not acknowledged and I never knew the cause of my problems. In college, I got severe headaches from the chemicals in photography class, but both the teacher and I figured out the cause and tried to find solutions so I could fulfill my class requirements.

When I got on my own, also, I changed to unscented laundry soap and as many other unscented products as I could on the advice of someone and because the smells “bothered me”.

But, I always had trouble on jobs. I’d get headaches especially at certain times or situations which were a mystery to me then, but which I think were probably due to exposure to cleaning supplies, fragrances, and other chemicals. The problem got worse and worse. I’d get sick — mostly constant severe headaches that were not classified as migraines, and a constant achy flu-like feeling that was not the flu or any other infection. I also had a runny nose that was not due to cocaine as many people thought. In fact, I could be fine and then all of a sudden while talking to someone, my nose would start to run. It would be a mystery to me. I’d say “I was fine before I started talking to you!” I’d sometimes get a headache or feel irritable and complain about the smell of their perfume or cologne, but they’d just get offended.

Finally, after the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, I quit work and moved out to the woods and slept a lot and ate only natural food and started to become healthy. Then I moved back to town and started to do things around people again and got sick again. This continued on for some time — get sick, retreat, get well, go out and do things, get sick, retreat.

A few years after that, I got eczema very bad on my scalp and the back of my hands and some spots on my arms. Everything the doctors prescribed made it worse (because I turned out to be allergic to the masking fragrance and the preservatives in the ointments they prescribed). It was not stress. It was chemicals. Finally, after convincing the doctor that I had allergies and going through all the food and plant allergies (which were negative), I got a patch test for chemical allergies (truetest.com — check it out. Your doctor has to order it, though). I was allergic to 6 out of 24 of the allergens on the test. That is 25%!! Not all chemicals are on the test, of course, but of the ones on it, I am allergic to perfumes/fragrances, preservatives, some metals, and formaldehyde — all the most pervasive ones! There is literally no where I can go in human society without being subjected to some of them, BUT…

If I avoid these chemicals completely and other chemicals that might be bothering me, eat organic food, exercise moderately, my fibromyalgia goes away. My sinus problems go away. The eczema has gone away.

So, what do you think of that?

“Stepping in the right direction”

There is a great blog just out on DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE by Brother Martin, called “Stepping in the right direction.” Check it out!  http://brothermartin.wordpress.com/

Sometimes lately, I get a feeling we are not just shouting in the dark anymore, that we are really on the verge of some real change that is not going to happen through some President of the USA bailing out corporations. Sometimes, I feel like some of those songs from the sixties and seventies, like “Bad Moon Arising” or “Change is gonna come” or “We shall overcome” or “Imagine” are going to be sung again as an anthem to what is happening.

Am I just a hopeless dreamer?

As, a sort of related side dish, the other day I was in a coffee shop that serves organically grown fair trade coffee and tea and one of the workers had John Lennon’s face on his T-shirt with his work-place name tag covering John’s eyes as if to protect John’s identity in a public photo. I asked him if John was being censored and he said No, but he was. As a worker at this ‘hip’ cafe, he was not allowed to have “certain” opinions — any opinions, really. This is far too common. It is a surgical removal of free thought, a lobotomy of sorts. No thinking allowed when making money for the bosses.

Sustainable Farming

The ecological/permaculture people have one definition for sustainable which means sustainable for the planet, for the viability of the soil in regards to farming.

The government has another definition of sustainable if you search their grants pages, for example. They want economic sustainability — farmers who can pay their own way, (plus the government’s –taxes – and the chemical companies, too, no doubt — product purchasing).

Can we have both with Organic farming? In the U.S., the small, family owned Organic farmer often seems to be doing better than the small, family owned non-organic farmer. They have a growing market and can charge higher prices for food that is known to be healthier and safer.   

Here’s an article about organic farming feeding the world — http://www.eartheasy.com/blog/2009/01/can-organic-farming-feed-the-world/ – whether research has shown that organic farming is sustainable by both definitions and can produce enough to meet the world’s needs. It’s worth checking out.

Bio-fuels & politics

Part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform was to implement a bio-fuels program similar to the one Brazil put into place in the 1970’s. We could have done it then, too, if oil interests didn’t have our government by the balls. Obama talks about a “green” industry, but is that going to happen? Or is he going to just keep helping big companies — the dinosaurs of industry? Oil prices are going up again as they do every summer. We still use primarily foreign oil. If we combined domestic ethanol with domestic gasoline we would have plenty for our future and not have to pay for another foreign barrel of oil, ever!

People complain about bio-fuels without even knowing what they are talking about.  Any vehicle on the market can handle 10 % ethanol in the gas mix. No one keeps their vehicles long enough for that mix to corrode the tanks or lines. The auto companies that Obama bailed out could be making flexible fuel vehicles to have up to 80% ethanol if necessary. People complain that ethanol gives poorer gas mileage, but my 19 year old vehicle got better gas mileage and spewed less smoke when they added 10% ethanol to the mix when gas prices were high.

Then people complain that corn prices are driven up by ethanol production. Isn’t anyone ever going to be satisfied or is it all about where you make your money and what you have to pay for? Is it all selfisness and greed? We pay CEOs too much for their “service” in the purchasing of their product, which is really OUR natural resources. We could work this all out, if desired. Raising organic food for eating, and not using corn for fillers in processed food. And I hate the greasy corn-fed chickens, anyway. The best chicken I’ve had since my childhood was a scrawny but tender and tasty Mexican chicken just across the border. It was grilled over an open fire and was juicy and succulent. That was 5 years ago and I still remember how it was!

So, What’s up with this? Comments welcome!

Kota’s Catch Blog has moved

to its own domain at http://kotascatch.wordpress.com

You can view the post “sulfites in dog food and thiamine deficiency” there and make comments there.