Transcript: Chemical Sensitivity

Zen Living
Episode “Chemical Sensitivity”

Nicole: You can’t hug your mom without getting dizzy. You can’t kiss your spouse without getting headaches and swelling. You can’t go to a restaurant or a crockery store without fainting. Going through life with chemical sensitivity is a life of isolation and inconvenience. We will meet with Alyssa Alvord, who will share her story of chemical sensitivity and her road to recovery.
Alyssa Alvord: I started with a lot of fatigue and migraine headaches and joint pain and muscle pain. I went to several doctors and no one could identify what the problem was. So I got considerably worse. My problems worsened to the point where I wasn’t able to walk by myself. And finally I met a physician ho suggest that I might have been chemically poisoned.
The main chemicals that sowed up were Formaldehyde, chlorine, and benzene. Those are in most building products, most floor, and carpet and paints, insulations.
Dr. Patricia Rosen: I don’t think that most general physicians will be aware of what multiple chemical sensitivity is. After reviewing many articles on this and seeing people who believed they had multiple chemical sensitivity. The scientific basis is that people notice a odor and develop symptoms. It is not really possible to be sensitive to chemicals that have totally different structures. So because you’re sensitive or irritated by the odor of a perfume, would not mean you are really sensitive or allergic to the odor of gasoline. Even though they are both petrochemicals.
George Swanson: Starting around the mid 80’s or the late 90’s people started to seal there homes much, much tighter than they had.
Nicole: how did they seal there homes?
George Swanson: Typically with a paper barrier put in there wall, or with a energy efficient windows and doors that were sealed very tightly.
Nicole: So they thought they were doing themselves a favor?
George Swanson: Right, but they were trapping, the toxic outgases from the materials were being trapped in the buildings.
Nicole: And what are some other things that constitute a sick building?
George Swanson: Well typically mold behind the walls. Trapped moisture, modern building materials that often use different types of polymers that would again trap moisture.
Alyssa Alvord: We purchased a very small kind of matchbox house. It was about 800 square feet. And gutted it.
Jon Alvord: We got rid of all the flooring. We tore out all the cabinets we didn’t need. We repainted everything with non toxic paints. We replaced all the air filtration that was in the house and tore out everything that was not absolutely essential for our living.
Alyssa Alvord: Even just sleeping on a organic cotton futon that was thrown on the floor, all of a sudden I was sleeping. And I hadn’t been sleeping regularly in years.
Jon Alvord: And then within about 2-4 weeks being in there she was back on her feet, to speaking clearly. Very coherent mentally.
Nicole: What about our carpet?
George Swanson: Even more so, right, everything gravity is pushing everything down to the bottom of the carpet and building up over the years. And combine that with moisture created from a pipe or a paper barrier under the concrete, and it becomes a excellent area for growing mold.
Dr. Patricia Rosen: There are certain rules that regulate air quality in a occupational setting that you don’t have in your own home. And because we now have air conditioning and have closed up our homes to save on fuel, we are more at risk for problems with air quality within our own homes
Alyssa Alvord: Some of the circumstances that contributed to it is that I grew up around a lot of chemical plants. My dad worked in chemical plants, and I worked in hair salons and spas. You build up a masking type phenomenon really where you don’t even notice for awhile. And then there is a tipping point for every person. So I just reached my tipping point.
We do know many of these chemicals are canceragenic. So for some people its cancer for some people its chemical sensitivity. For some people its adult onset ADD, or asthma. Or just different, it runs the gamut; there are probably twenty different things. For some people its lupus or other auto immune diseases. So there is kind of a laundry list of things that can happen. And what happened to me is generally termed automatic nervous system failure.
Dr. Patricia Rosen: The difference between a poison and a medicine is the does. So if someone is to go and drink a glass of water a day or eight glasses of water a day, they are not going to be poisoned. But if you go run a race and drink just water and don’t replace your electrolytes you can actually get poisoned by that water. And the clinical facts are you drop your sodium and you become nauseated and very ill. So theoretically anything can be a poison.
Alyssa Alvord: I was putting myself in a lot of really toxic places and not realizing it. So for example going to the grocery store where they have scented candles by the checkout. I didn’t know why every time I went to the checkout I was just dropping. So once we had more information, and we realized oh, those are artificially scented candles. Ok, once you put two and two together its easy to avoid those things to start to feel better.
Jon Alvord: And it becomes one of these situations where if you love the person, then you are going to commit to it. And there is a lot of people who don’t believe it is actually a real problem. And so as a result there are people who, and we have friends who are chemically sensitive whose spouse does not stop wearing colognes, perfumes, they don’t change there cleaning supplies. They don’t do anything. And they never have gotten any better.
Dr. Patricia Rosen: You can’t be allergic to all chemicals, because they all have different structures, and most of them are not allergenic. People who are sensitive to specific materials in those locations should be cautious. As you go through the grocery store if they are using metabysulfides and you are allergic to metabysulfides, which is what they spray sometimes on the vegetables to make them look green. You are going to get ill. You can become ill.
Jon Alvord: If she was out in a situation I could see something was going wrong. Sometimes it was physical signs, like a whole side of her face would swell like a soccer ball. And she was fine when she walked in. And her tongue would swell up, where she would open her mouth and it would be this big old sausage sitting there, you know. I was wondering why I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Because she couldn’t speak because her tongue would swell up. And we would be on opposite sides of the store and I would be calling her, you know you got to get away from there because they are cleaning, the guys using Windex or something over there.
Come on over, and she would look at me and say I can’t move I am trying to move, I can’t move. And so I would literally put my arm around her and take her out of the store. You know, forget it, we just put our items down and we go. And about a hour later after we left the swelling would go away and the swelling would go down in her tongue, and then she would be back to thinking clearly. But in that moment that whole fog would happen and she just couldn’t even function.
Alyssa Alvord: And now I can go to movies, I can go to the grocery store. I can do these things for a short amounts of time and be ok. I couldn’t stay there for eight hours, but I can live a pretty normal life, I can go out to eat, I can go do these things.
Nicole: We all respond to our environment differently, but thanks to people like Alyssa, we can be more aware of the chemicals just from going about our daily life’s. I am Nicole Tomlinson, and from all of us at Zen Living thank you so much for watching and we will catch you next time. Peace.