My Story

When I look back on my life now, I think it probably all began in my early twenties when I started to itch every time I wore my watch. Soon afterwards the cool-looking earrings I loved to sport in my pierced ears started causing problems too. I'd get an itchy rash on my ear lobe and before long it would become sore, swollen and weepy. My days of trendy earrings were over and I was forced to switch to gold or silver, not the cheapest jewellery for an impoverished student. A gold watch was ofcourse way beyond my means so I switched to a Swatch, those wonderful plastic watches that restored my street cred and my timekeeping back in the '80's. As long as the back of the watch face did not directly touch my skin, I was fine.

Contact dermatitis was really the first clue that I had that I could possibly be allergic to anything. I learned to live with it and moved on with my life. Next up was Chinese food. Every time I ate at my local Chinese restaurant I'd end up feeling terribly thirsty and would have a wakeful night. I started to avoid eating Chinese and got on with living. I moved house (several times), got married and then had my first child......and that was when my problems really started. Around my daughter's first birthday I started to be violently sick. I suspected a case of food poisoning as the symptoms were just the same; vomiting, chills, sweats, headache, thirst etc. I lost weight rapidly, which for someone as tiny as me is not a good thing. But the vomiting wouldn't stop. The doctor performed every test known to man in an effort to work out why I couldn't stop being sick, but everything came back normal. I spent several months having good days and bad, struggling to care for a one year old and feeling like a failure.

Eventually I was referred to a Gastro-enterologist, who also subjected me to a battery of tests. I had blood tests for everything from Celiacs disease to Cancer, a Barium Meal (where you drink this strange concoction and they x-ray you as it passes through your body) and finally, a Jejunal biopsy (where they insert a tube down your throat until you gag, so that they can take a sample from your small intestine.) It was all very unpleasant and revealed...........nothing!

.........The conclusion?

That I was perfectly healthy and must therefore be suffering from some kind of intolerance to additives and preservatives in food. Seventeen years ago, this was quite an open-minded diagnosis. It would be hard to discover what the triggers were, I was told, because intolerances work differently to allergies. The former build up over time much like a cup slowly fills with water one drip at a time, until eventually it overflows. All they could do was give me a drug to take half an hour before eating out anywhere. It would line my stomach and protect it from an allergic reaction much like asthma drugs prevent an asthma attack.

It worked for a while, although I avoided eating in restaurants as much as possibly preferring to eat at home where I could control what went into my food. I have always been a good cook and come from a long line of excellent chefs who all have a keen interest in growing and preparing food. Little did I know what a blessing this would become to me.

I plodded carefully on, had another child and got used to the combination of morning sickness and food induced sickness that punctuated these years of my life. My immune system took quite a clobbering, but I put the frequent colds down to having a pre-school child in the house who brought home every illness on the list. Then one day during a visit to the doctor about yet another chest infection, I was tested for asthma. I tested positive. It wasn't bad but it was enough to need controlling. Cold air seemed to make it worse and strong perfumes were completely out. Walking through the perfume section of any department store was dicing with danger. I particularly hated those women who stood there spraying copious amounts of fragrance into the air just as you passed by them!

I had also become increasingly sensitive to make-up and skincare products. I remember a particularly painful experience with a popular brand name Hypoallergenic moisturizer that left me looking like I'd been under a sunray lamp for too long! My sore, red face was ofcourse of no concern to the company's customer service department, who replied  to my letter of complaint with the statement that they couldn't possibly test for all allergens when creating a hypoallergenic product. Great!

Then I moved to Norway and my life changed hugely (and not just because I had another child!) One of my first discoveries was the bread. It was divine. I bought it fresh every day from the local bakery and ok, it didn't last very long before going off, but it tasted great. I soon realised that it didn't last long because it wasn't stashed full of preservatives like the breads I'd been eating in the UK. Suddenly I understood that one of the main things that had been making me sick was my daily loaf of bread. During the seven years I lived in Scandinavia, I learned to bake my own bread, making rolls, pizza doughs and sweet breads. I also bought fish from the daily market that had been swimming in the ocean hours earlier and vegetables grown in the local fields. I have never eaten better or been able to feed myself so safely! 

I still got sick from time to time, but it was normally caused by over-the-counter pharmaceuticals or drugs prescribed to cure other ailments. After a case of the stomach flu that lingered on and on, one enlightened doctor taught me the value of pro-biotics and I was well within days. I learned to maintain my body's chemical balance by seeking out natural remedies first and am a firm believer in the value of herbs and spices to maintain health. 

For the past six years I have been living in North America and oh, what a challenge that has been. Seeking out fresh, chemical free food is harder here than anywhere else I have ever lived, partly because food labelling is so poor. Doctor's still look at me as if I'm mad when I present with symptoms of food poisoning or diabetes that go on for two or three weeks at a time. They run the tests, which are ofcourse all negative and still no one connects the dots and actually acknowledges that chemical sensitivity is a real and growing condition.

Toxicity caused by the chemicals we eat, clean ourselves with and pollute our environment with could prove to be the cause of everything from Alzheimers to Cancer, but little is done to protect us from these consequences. My case is extreme, but I believe that everyone is affected to some degree by their unwitting exposure to multiple toxins. I've always felt that we will go down in history as the generation that killed its own offspring. For our children's sake, I hope this won't be true.

Welcome!

It's taken me a long time to get to this point......17 years to be precise. It's been a long, slow journey, but in some ways the journey has only just begun. Writing about my experience is just the start of a new phase of my travels. Last week after a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning, I decided that it was time for me to embrace my situation instead of denying it......time to connect with others who have also travelled this road and to stand up for what I know to be true about the over abundance of chemicals we eat, clean ourselves with and pollute our environment with every day.

Suffering in silence produces a great sense of loneliness. You're different, your body responds differently from most other people's when it encounters the toxins of the modern world. You feel as if no one understands. Doctors think you're neurotic. They can't find anything wrong with you. You see that look pass across their faces and you know you've just been labelled. So you continue on alone, adjusting your diet and avoiding the things you know are bad for you as best you can. But what about the things you don't, the substances that are hidden away in the list of ingredients that take an advanced degree to understand? What about environmental toxins......the cleaning products, beauty products and other substances that we use every day without question? How do we protect ourselves from those?

I've called this blog Chemical Free Consumer because that's really my goal. In order to maintain optimal health, it's important for me to eliminate as many of these neurotoxins from my life as possible. My companion recipe blog is called Daily Bread because this is really where it all started for me. Something as simple as the bread I was eating every day turned out to be making me sick. When I discovered what actually went into making my daily loaf, I realized why. If we can't trust the staples of our diet, how can we ever be healthy? Here at Chemical Free Consumer I'd like to share some of the steps I've taken over the last (almost) two decades to maintain my health. I also hope that we can support each other by sharing tips, tricks and ideas on how to reduce the chemicals we expose ourselves to every day. It's no longer just food additives, preservatives and colorants that pose a hazard for me. There's make-up and skincare, hair products, laundry detergent..........an endless list of items we all use each day.

So what do you say? Do you want to come on this journey with me? Let's explore this subject together and help each other along the way.