Multiple Chemical Sensitivities: A Survivor's Guide

By Suni Rose

While working at her job in a medical lab, the author is exposed to formaldehyde gas. As a result she develops multiple chemical sensitivities. She discovers this illness is unrecognized by standard medicine. Bent on reclaiming her health and her sanity, she starts a holistic healing journey and succeeds in her attempt. This book is a priceless reference manual for anyone suffering from MCS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Suni Rose
• Release date: Oct 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452440378

Suni Rose

Suni Rose is a native of Jamaica. After graduating from high school, she migrated to the United States where she attended Fordham University in New York. She went on to pursue a career as a medical laboratory technologist, an occupation she held for twenty-eight years.In 1992 Suni received a prolonged exposure to formaldehyde gas in her lab, which led to the development and diagnosis of a condition called multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS). Through the use of a holistic approach coupled with an alternative medical program, she healed herself of the life threatening illness. Her book, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities...A Survivor’s Guide, details her challenges with this illness and her eventual healing.Suni went on to the study of alternative medicine and in 1999 co-founded a holistic healing center in Marietta, Georgia. Since then she has dedicated her life to helping others surmount the mental, physical and spiritual challenges they encounter in their lives.Suni holds a PhD in Metaphysical Science, a Masters in Seichim and Reiki energy healing, and a certificate in Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapy. She’s an Ordained Metaphysical Minister and a Certified Zen Qigong Instructor. She practices energy healing, hypnotherapy, spiritual counseling, nutritional counseling, and holistic life coaching at the Marietta center, and holds Zen Qigong classes for healing, rejuvenation and evolution.Suni is the author of Radical Goal Setting...The Science of Turning Your Dreams into Reality, a practical, how-to manual on achieving your purpose. She has written several articles dealing with holistic healing, as well as a novel and some picture book stories.Suni welcomes you to transform your mind, to believe in the ‘impossible’, and to understand that miracles do happen, all the time. Suni experiences the miracles daily. She holds that miracles are the will of God perfect every moment, and she delights in assisting others to manifest their miracles.A mother of two beautiful spirits and grandmother of six, Suni currently resides in Marietta, GA.

Book preview

Multiple Chemical Sensitivities

A Survivor’s Guide

Suni Rose, PhD

I think your book will be very useful for the people that are suffering from MCS. You have a lot of information and advice for these sufferers... The book surely could be used as a reference manual for MCS sufferers. This information is very valuable for anyone that is in the situation you have been in.

Dr. Luc Chaltin, Doctor of Homeopathy, former Director of Newton Laboratories

Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2010 by Suni Rose

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

One:

a.The Development of Events

b.It’s Not All In Your Head

Two:

Regaining My Power

Three:

a.The Workers Compensation Nightmare

b.Convincing Social Security

Four:

a.Understanding the Illness

b.Modifying the Diet

c.The Fast

Five:

a.The Rebuilding

b.Nutritional Supplements

Six:

a.Learning to Cope

b.A Dream Come True

c.Making Mistakes

Seven:

The Dental Connection

Eight:

a. Looking Ahead

b.The Social-Psychological Effects of MCS

Nine:

Grasping the Scope of the Problem

Ten:

Defining the Differences

Eleven:

a.Surviving MCS

b.The Seven Stages of Healing

c.Denial

d.Anger

e.Bargaining

f.Depression

g.Acceptance

h.Rebirth

i.Creation of a New Life

j. Forgiveness

k.Peace

l.The Nine Stages of Healing

m.Affirmations for Health and Healing

n.Breathing Technique for Meditation

Afterthoughts:

Appendix:

a. Nutritional Guide

b. Further Recommendations

Notes:

Sources for Further Referral:

References:

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the silent victims of our great industrial age who have no voice, no strength and no power.

Acknowledgements

To Dr. Albert Robbins, the environmental physician who solved my medical mystery and started me on my way back to health. You are a bearer of light for many unfortunate victims of our great industrial age.

To the late Dr. Luc Chaltin, former Director of Newton Laboratories, Conyers, GA, who spent the time and effort to read the first draft of my book and offer me valuable comments. Luc, I salute you in your heavenly abode.

To my beloved daughters, Antoinette and Yuma, who stood with me through the trials and tribulations.

To all who helped me run the course and, most importantly, to my unseen healers and guides who directed me on the path of healing for mind, spirit and body—I love you, honor you and appreciate you.

Foreword

Waking with an illness that’s disguised

When no one understands you’re sensitized

You’ll be labeled with a psychiatric code

Better run for your life and hit

The environmental road!

—From the song Polluted Indoor Air

By The Musician Physician

Suni Rose was a patient of mine fifteen years ago when she developed multiple chemical sensitivities. Recently she contacted me to write the foreword for her book. I was the environmental physician who made the initial diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivities and gave a new environmental direction to her life. It is with great appreciation for her courage and dedicated purpose in writing this book that I accept the honor of writing this Foreword. I have read this book and shared it with friends, patients and family. I encourage you to do the same. This true story is not only her healing journey but also a message and warning about the dangerous risk of modern chemical exposures for future generations. Her message compels you to become environmentally aware.

Shift Happens! We are currently at the beginning of a new paradigm shift in the recognition of environmentally and chemically induced illnesses in modern medicine. We have entered the twenty-first century and it is a brave new chemical world, physicians and patients are learning. Due to many new discoveries and advances in modern chemical technology, there are now over 60,000 man-made chemicals in common use in industrialized societies. The fragrance, preservative, pesticide and fabric softener industries have become an intimate part of our modern American life and culture. The use of chemicals in personal care products, new clothing materials and modern, new, sealed buildings have made man-made chemicals now ubiquitous.

Suni Rose raises our level of environmental awareness as she grabs our attention and tells her unusual and compelling story. While working at her job as a medical technologist she’s accidentally exposed to formaldehyde fumes in the medical laboratory. As a result she becomes environmentally ill. She becomes chemically sensitized. Once sensitized, she is never the same person as before. Once sensitized, she has to avoid most commonly used chemicals to survive…or she risks becoming severely symptomatic with flu-like and neurological symptoms. The requirements of her illness force her to take charge of her life in ways she never dreamed of. Losing virtually everything financially because of her illness, she’s forced to seek compensation and applies for disability. However, she discovers that her illness is unrecognized by the medical profession. In order to receive her disability she tactfully accepts a diagnosis of mental illness.

Bent on recovering her physical health and sanity, she’s challenged to learn about this devastating illness and ultimately to develop her own street smart, environmentally safe lifestyle. Utilizing everything she has ever learned, including healing wisdom from her Jamaican upbringing and ancient healing principles of body, mind and spirit—combined with her new environmental awareness—she becomes mentally and physically stronger and shares her story and healing journey with us.

Many of the thousands of chemically sensitized individuals in this world aren’t as lucky as Suni Rose; they’re sadly misdiagnosed and placed on dangerous chemical drugs that usually do more harm than good. The very unfortunate ones are locked in mental institutions because they were misdiagnosed as mentally ill. Most receive an improper diagnosis because their physicians never suspect that chemical causation could be the trigger for their complex mental and physical problems. Sadly, their doctors don’t know that they don’t know!

There’s a silently mounting epidemic of chemically induced illnesses and we’re not aware that we may be victims. These walking wounded go from doctor to doctor with complaints of multiple symptoms affecting multiple organ systems. Many are chemically sensitive. Multiple Chemical Sensitivities is a masked illness and until the individual is properly unmasked to environmental chemical exposures, they cannot get better. Unmasking includes avoidance of many chemicals, pollutants and allergens in the air we breathe, the foods we eat, the water we drink and the products we use.

The chemically sensitized are easily mislabeled by psychiatrists either as psychosomatic, as malingerers, or as mentally ill. However, if they’re lucky enough to fall into the hands of a caring environmental physician, it can be proven that they’re environmentally ill. Thus they can be treated appropriately.

As an environmental physician I have seen and evaluated hundreds of environmentally ill individuals. Education is the key to stopping the progression of the illness. With environmental awareness, discipline and the development of environmental controls, many do improve and get better. Proper medical diagnosis and treatment of underlying and overlapping illnesses can and do improve their ability to function normally in society.

The major classes of exposures that appear to initiate the multiple chemical sensitivity syndromes include exposure to pesticides sprayed in closed spaces either at home or at work. Working in sick buildings and being exposed to allergens, poor ventilation and air pollutants can also cause sensitization. Those living in toxic communities like Love Canal are more susceptible. And, of course, people working in the chemical and printing industries are more at risk. Home builders and those who work with formaldehyde products are more susceptible. New building materials outgas multiple chemicals that can sensitize individuals and make them sick. By working with latex gloves, doctors and nurses have become chemically sensitized.

In some sensitized individuals a direct chemical exposure may not be the cause. There are many different kinds of chemicals that can initiate the illness in chemically sensitive individuals. There appears to be a spectrum of chemical sensitivity disorders that is comparable to the spectrum of infectious diseases…they’re all similar, but each case of MCS can require a different individualized treatment. According to William Meggs, M.D; author of The Inflammation Cure, the mechanism of injury in multiple chemical sensitivities may be neurogenic inflammation. Damage to the body’s biological defense mechanisms from toxic or allergic exposures occurs at the cellular level. Immunologic hyperactivity plays a role in sensitized individuals. Once the body’s defense systems are damaged, minimal environmental exposures once previously tolerated may result in major symptoms. The individual becomes reactive to everything or becomes a universal reactor.

Some individuals become chemically sensitive as a result of the overuse of drugs like antibiotics and steroids that destroy the body’s natural immune defenses. As a result they develop immune deficiencies and imbalances, leading to the development of opportunistic infections that seem to create the chemical sensitivity. Chemical exposures displace nutrients at the cellular level through competitive inhibition. Nutritional factors then become important in the treatment of the chemically sensitized. The use of special hypoallergenic diets and other nutrients such as antioxidants and probiotics have been helpful in the treatment of some chemically sensitized individuals.

We have seen great strides in medicine, for instance the containment of infectious diseases that plague modern man. Now with the dawn of twenty-first century chemically induced illnesses, we are plagued by the same ingenuity responsible for the cure of those terrible diseases. Only this time it’s not man’s benefit to man but man’s inhumanity to man.

The following is a poem describing the controversy surrounding multiple chemical sensitivities/environment illness, and the manner in which modern traditional physicians appear to be dealing with it.

It’s not I-g-E!

"It’s not IgE, the allergist said

The symptoms you have are all in your head…

The psychiatrist shot back, their brains are all kindled

And peer review claimed insurance was swindled.

The epidemiologist calculated meaningless clusters

The toxicologist LD50’d pesticide dusters

The formaldehyde industry said no need to worry

What’s with the perfume and chemical flurry?

The mycologist fermented mycotoxicosis

The pulmonologist suspected aspergillosis

The immunologist gamma’d, they’ve been sensitized

And the industry doctor hid behind double blind lies…

Chemical allergy, neutralized the environmentalist

Post traumatic stress syndrome, Freud’d the psychologist

Candida overgrowth, swabbed the proctologist

You know tics are genetic, Spec’d the neurologist…

Zen them to us, needled the acupuncturist

Loaded with metals, intravenoused the chelationist

Kinesthesiolize them, NAET’d the chiropractor

But it’s all inflammation, lectured the professor…

Jesus saves…we can heal you…yes, you have sinned!

The biochemist Opathy’d, they’ve been porphyrin’d

The attorney decided to sue everyone

But there is no disease, fired back the hired gun!

The government’s broke and we’re stuck in Iraq

We’re not prepared for a toxic terror attack

Everybody must get stoned, sang out Bob Dylan

And the chemically sensitized prayed for the children!"

From…It’s not IgE

By The Musician Physician

Albert F. Robbins, D.O., MSPH

Environmental Physician

aka The Musician Physician

http://www.Allergycenter.com

Introduction

Have you ever walked into a room with new carpeting and immediately recoiled from the noxious odor? Or walked into a newly erected building and experienced the same reaction?

Have you ever entered a tire store, a beauty parlor, a nail salon or clothing store and spun right back around? How about trying on some deceptively smelling lotion at the cosmetic counter and making a mad dash to the nearest wash room to get it off?

Have you ever passed by an ash tray that contained old cigarette ashes and suddenly felt sick to your stomach? In your excitement to welcome your first grandchild into the world, did you undertake to crochet that darling baby blanket and found you couldn’t continue?

Have you ever kept backing up from the person in front of you at the checkout counter whose perfume made your head reel? How about sprinting past the artificially scented (as in cinnamon scented) arrangements in the floral department of the supermarket as you tried hard not to breathe?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, it’s likely you’ve been sensitized to the man-made chemicals these products and places contain. If all the exposures you received habitually caused a toxic overload in your system which crippled you for days or weeks on end, it’s likely you suffered from (or are still suffering from) a condition called multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), known commonly as chemical sensitivity disorder. Having experienced this illness in all its ramifications, and having overcome