The Chemical Connection

Chemicals Contaminate Everything

You will never change how you interact with the chemicals around you
until you change your attitude about the harm they can cause.

Even after I read article after article about the possibility that chemicals could be the culprit for my devastating fibromyalgia pain and debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, it took several months for me to summon up the will to radically change my lifestyle.  I kept trying to rationalize.  After all, if this was the root of my problem, why weren't more doctors recommending this course of action?  Why weren't more people getting rid of things in their environment that could be making them so sick?

I decided maybe one reason this hasn't happened on a large scale is because not enough people have been willing to alter the way they live.  Sometimes we are too ingrained in our routines to be willing to make drastic changes. Getting rid of the chemicals around me couldn't hurt anything so it met my primary requirement of "First do no harm."  Resigning myself to feeling horrible all the time was not an option.  So in January of 2010 I made a commitment to find out where the chemicals lurked, how to get rid of them, what to substitute in their place, and wait and see what happened.  

I did not expect this to be a quick fix.  After all, I had been exposed to hundreds of chemicals every day for decades.  It made sense to me that it would take time, maybe a long time, to notice any difference.  I had nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain.  

I started with what I felt would be the easiest group of chemicals for me to eliminate:  anything that has a scent.  I had already removed a good many of these types of chemicals from my environment due to previous allergic reactions.  So I was surprised how many things in this category I still needed to get rid of.  Scents are created by adding chemicals to products.  Even so called "natural" scents require chemicals to bind the scent to the product.  It is relatively easy to create a scent free environment in your home but it may require that you change almost every product you use.  

Scented products you will have to eliminate include:

perfume

air fresheners

incense

scented candles

potpourri 

You need to check the labels of other products to see if they contain a scent including:

makeup

hairspray

deodorant

laundry detergent

cleaning supplies

bath soap

shampoo

hand lotion

Fortunately, almost everything on this list comes in an unscented version.  There are hypoallergenic, unscented makeup lines and laundry detergents free of perfume and dyes.  Shampoo and soap that are white tend to have less scents and less chemicals than those that have color.  There are natural cleaning products you can buy or you can make your own cleaning products using natural ingredients.

There would be many more things I would eliminate and many more things I would add before I recovered.  But this was the first small step.  I felt a small stirring of something I hadn't felt in over a year: hope.  

Have you had any adverse reactions to scented products?