Friday Fun - 2 enron buildings
A puzzle of the “new” enron building reflecting the “old” enron building. I think that enron fell before the “new” building was fully occupied. Click on the image or here to go to the puzzle.
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of April in the year 2007.
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A puzzle of the “new” enron building reflecting the “old” enron building. I think that enron fell before the “new” building was fully occupied. Click on the image or here to go to the puzzle.
Air fresheners act in one or more of the following ways:
Not much there that actually “freshens” the air now, is there? The EPA has done testing of the plug-in types and found that the chemicals they contain react with indoor air pollutants to produce even more toxic substances.
How then, can you really freshen the air in your home?
Here’s some healthy ideas:
Each year, in April, San Antonio hosts a 10 day party. Today, April 20th, is the start of Fiesta for 2007. In honor of Fiesta, last week’s Indian Blanket has put on its Finest Fiesta Colors:
I love shower time because my mind is allowed to wander aimlessly. Occasionally, it comes up with good ideas.
I don’t usually like to even think about living my life over type questions. I think they’re pointless, and can often lead to negative thoughts. BUT, sometimes, it can be a good learning tool for yourself or others, so here goes:
If I had my life to live over, I think I would have avoided ALL fragrances. I was 16 when I had my first migraine. I was able to trace it to a single perfume and deduced that I was allergic to it. (Which wasn’t technically correct, the response is not an allergic reaction.) Other perfumes didn’t bother me. At first. Then, over time, more and more fragrances began to bother me. I eliminated all perfumes and colognes from my life. I found unscented hair products, deodorants, laundry products, etc.
I kept adding to the list. I used to make a huge batch of spaghetti sauce a few times a year. I’d start it early in the morning and let it simmer all day. The aromas filled the entire house. Then I’d freeze it in dinner-for-two size portions. It makes a pretty quick meal. But in late ‘03, I wound up with a bad migraine from smelling the sauce all day. And trust me, everything in that sauce was natural.
It’s one thing to have to (try to) avoid fragrances. It’s another when you have to avoid natural smells such as cooking smells.
A common migraine theory is that the triggers for a migraine are additive. So that if I get enough in my system, I wind up with a migraine. My personal theory as to why I began having migraines all the time a few years back is that the is an accumulation within the body. Thus my system reacts more readily to things that never used to bother me. So, IF I could live my life over again, here is what I would do different:
Would all this help? Can’t say for sure. But perhaps it is worth a try. I have a good friend who has bad reactions (worse than mine) to one or two perfumes. I think she believes I’m a bit “over the top” with all my preaching against perfumes. Except that she hasn’t really put together the fact that, in the 7 years I’ve known her, I’ve watched her add more than one fragranced product to her list. Hmmm….
I have suffered most of my life because of fragranced products in our world. The number of fragranced products seems to have increased astronomically in recent years. Which has only made my suffering worse. I am not alone in this. And I have found that there are many people who are much worse off than me.
So, my purpose here is two-fold:
First, to help myself and others learn more about coping with their health issues.
Second, to educate others about the problems that their fragranced products create for otheres.
It’s a sensitive issue. If I tell someone that the plug-in air freshener in their home is why I won’t visit their house, their reaction may not be a good one. Rather than seeing it as a health issue, they take it personally. And this is only one instance. There are so many circumstances. When I have tried to tell someone that I have a problem with their perfume, I will later hear them say that I don’t like their perfume. And while that is true, it really isn’t the issue. And it is nothing personal. I dislike everyone’s perfume.
On the other hand, I have read posts written by MCS sufferers where they attack those who wear perfume. Calling someone stupid isn’t really helpful. It isn’t a question of anyone’s intelligence. It’s a question of their lack of knowledge.
And that is what I hope to do with this blog. To share knowledge about the health issues related to all the fragranced products in our world, so that hopefully people will think twice before using quite so many of them. And maybe they’ll start demanding more unfragranced products.
I invite all comments. Especially to hear about your personal experiences and how you’ve solve problems. Or what additional information you have on a topic. And I’ll publish those comments. Unless you are attacking others. If you’re going to attack people, don’t look for your comment to be approved.
An article in the papers says that “federal guidelines due this summer are expected to urge doctors to more closely monitor whether treatment is truly controlling eeryday symptoms and improving patients’ quality of life - and to adjust therapy until it does.” It goes on to suggest a campaign to teach patients they need better help, but does it go far enough? Why do we only want to treat the symptoms? We should be looking at the environment of the asthma sufferer as well. But what else is contributing his asthma attacks?
I was 47 years old when I went from and having occasional migraines caused by exposure too much perfume to having daily migraines. In fact, it was at this time that I learned that they were even migraines. I went through a lot of doctors and neurologists at first. Each time I saw a new one, they gave me a different drug to “prevent” the migraines. None of them helped. And I kept asking, “Why am I having these problems now? What happened to suddenly make me have this head pain all the time?” And I got no answers. No one seemed to care about Why, they only wanted to make them go away. But I felt that Why was an important part of how we would make them go away.
I knew that fragrances played a role, but it seemed there had to be more. Even working from home didn’t help 100%. Finally, one doctor’s office gave me a five page list of foods that are known to be migraine triggers - nuts, nitrates, msg, aspartame, chocolate, and on and on. As I began eliminating those items from my diet, I found some relief. I have since been able to pare down that list to those items that I know are a problem for me. And no, the migraines aren’t gone, but they are less frequent. They now seem to be only triggered by fragrance products.
The bottom line is that we had to go beyond the symptoms to determine what was triggering the migraines in order to gain any kind of control. And curiously, I am now on one of the drugs that was tried five years ago. And it is helping.
Rather than just treating the symptoms of your child’s asthma, perhaps you should first try to determine what triggers attacks and try to eliminate them from their environment (as much as possible). My husband has had asthma since he was a child. But since we’ve been together, it is much better controlled because our home is Fragrance Free.
Since the ingredients may not tell you that there is a fragrance in a product, you might be tempted to use the “sniff test.” But there are 2 problems with opening a product in the store and smelling it.
First, there are a lot of competing smells in your average store. You may not detect a fragrance specifically coming from a cleaning product in the store. This is especially true if the store has chosen to “freshen the air.”
Second, there could be a masking fragrance in there. If you have severe reactions to fragrances, or are concerned for the environment, then these are still a problem.
The best solution is to seek out companies and products that spcifically state they have no added fragrances.
Most people are likely to say, “No.”
The prevalence of fragranced products makes it hard to isolate them as a cause. I first determined I had a problem with fragrances in 1970. There were not near as many fragrance products in our envinonment back then!
Before you answer “No”, answer these questions:
Do you or a family member have:
If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then you may want to look at fragranced products as a culprit. At the very least, fragrances can often make any of the above conditions worse. Many of these health issues are on the rise in our country. The chemicals in the modern fragrance play a bigger role in these than most of us think.
Enjoy!
