Tag: odors

Coping, Triggers

That Stinks

Kerrie Smyres

Certain odors are obvious and terrible headache triggers for me, but I avoid artificial or strong scents and other triggering smells as much as possible. The cleaning products and air “fresheners” used in hotels can be really bad, but I’m generally OK if I stay in a non-smoking room.

Then there are the times that my plans don’t work out.

The first night Hart and I were visiting my sister, we stayed in a hotel so her cat and dog wouldn’t exacerbate his allergies. This was the first time we’d done so and were excited to have a pet-free place to spend time with the kids.

Everything was fine until we got into our room, which had the air conditioning on but was hotter than the horrendous heat outside. When we went to switch rooms, we were told that the room with the broken AC was the last non-smoking room available. The only other hotel in town is a dodgy place, so taking the smoking room was really our only option.

The cleaning crew had achieved the goal of covering up the smoke smell — with strawberry bubblegum-scented air freshener. I was near tears. This was supposed to be an easy, relaxing couple days during which we had fun with my sister and her family. But noooo, nothing is ever that easy. We debated our non-existent options and knew that all we could do was spend as little time in the room as possible.

It turned out OK. My sister and her family are building a house (literally), so we toured the framed-in rooms and laughed at their 100-pound dog who insisted in lying in a not-hooked-up bathtub. The we took the kids to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which meant a smoke- and pet-free three hours.

I got a migraine in the night and woke up feeling like I needed to hose out my nose, but felt much better after I showered and checked out of the room.

Telling you this story is kind of silly. There was no drama in the event, nor is there an illuminating solution that could make all your travels odor-free. I’m just complaining because the whole thing stunk. (tee, hee)

Today we’re off to go camping in Glacier National Park. We’ll spend tonight in a hotel so we don’t have to set up camp after dark. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll get a non-stinky non-smoking room.

Coping, Triggers

Travel Lodgings with Fewer Odors and Chemicals

Kerrie Smyres

If odors or chemicals trigger your headaches, traveling can be miserable. The moment of opening the hotel door and having a scented room spray rush out fills me with dread because I know that I may spend much of the trip in that very hotel room with my head pounding.

Nancy Westrom, who has multiple chemical sensitivity, has created a guide to vacation lodgings with reduced toxicity (and often odor). A few of the options are listed online and you can buy a printed directory for $17. The directory, which was updated this year, lists 285 different “safe” US vacation lodgings and 30 international locations. It also includes 51 campgrounds, most of which are in the US.

If you need to stay somewhere not on the list, she recommends reserving lodging as far in advance as possible and e-mailing to ask for your needs to be met, following up to make sure this has been done and leaving a generous tip for housekeepers. For herself, she asks for rooms far away from renovations and with lots of windows. I’d also make sure the windows open to rid the room of residual perfumes.

The Safer Travel Directory is a brilliant idea with lots of information to make travel a little easier for us. Now we need to come up with a guide on dealing with the environmetal triggers of headache found in cars, planes, trains and buses. Any ideas?

(For more information online about lodging for odor- and chemical-sensitive travels, Google green hotels.)

Coping, Diet, Exercise, Triggers

Self-Care or Alternative Medicine?

Kerrie Smyres

I’ve blogged a lot about meds and medical devices, but haven’t really discussed “alternative” therapies. There are two reasons for this. The first is that none of the alternative treatments that I have tried have worked for me, so I don’t think to recommend them. The more important reason is that much of the advice of alternative practitioners is what I think of as simply taking care of myself. I do employ many of the strategies of alternative medicine; I just don’t think of them as alternative.

The non-alternative alternative therapies that I try to follow:

Eat simply prepared produce and meat
Frozen veggies make this much easier and Penzeys Spices make it tastier; both make preparation a snap. I also eat a lot of organic produce and organic free-range meat. Living in the northwest give me an advantage with this; organic is easy to come by and isn’t outrageously expensive.

Avoid inhaling potentially harmful chemicals or substances
Since most artificial scents or offensive odors trigger headaches for me, this is pretty easy. Most of my cleaning products are homemade or from Seventh Generation and candles are beeswax or soy. And, as I’ve already complained, I am careful to find home furnishings that don’t off-gas much.

Avoid potentially harmful food additives
Avoid all forms of MSG, nitrates, nitrites, sulfates, sulfites, and artificial sweeteners, flavorings or colorings. This means skipping almost all convenience foods, sauces and dressings.

Exercise and relax
My beloved yoga is out, but I try to take a short walk every day, even if it is just to my favorite coffeehouse (.8 miles round trip!). Meditation is beyond my grasp, but I do try to lie down, breathe deeply and relax all my muscles for about 10 minutes each day. This is usually when I lie down to go to sleep, but I figure every little bit counts.

Use aromatherapy
Maybe essential oils help my headaches, maybe not, but I love smelling lavender, mint and orange. I smell them straight from the bottle, rub them on my temples, burn them with a candle or put them in a spray bottle with alcohol (is that a harmful-to-inhale substance?) and use them as air fresheners.

Don’t mistake me for a whole health goody goody. These are all steps I try to do, which means that I do them most of the time unless I want to go out for dinner, get my shower really clean, take advantage of high energy days or be lazy. But I do feel better when I follow the “rules.” The days I give in to reading a book and eating cookie dough all day are indulgences that I pay for with more headaches.

(P.S. Many of the foods and products I mention are more expensive than conventional varieties. I stock up on frozen vegetables when they are on sale, burn fewer candles than I used to, and remind myself that meds are expensive too.)

Triggers

Cinnamon Invasion

Kerrie Smyres

At my biannual tooth cleaning this morning, the hygienist tried to polish my teeth with cinnamon toothpaste. As soon as I smelled it, I jumped even higher than I did when she sprayed a sensitive tooth with cold water, then asked incredulously, “Is that cinnamon?” As if using cinnamon toothpaste is completely beyond the realm of acceptable behavior.

I’d already had her get Vaseline for my lips (so they wouldn’t crack while she was cleaning) and put on latex-free gloves (they give me cold sores), so I hated to be even more high-maintenance, but there was no choice. After a look of shock passed over her face, she kindly offered me a choice of cherry, mint or orange toothpaste. But she did complain that she’d already loaded the tool with cinnamon.

It seems like such a small thing, but for me it was disaster averted. If only I could convince grocery stores and gift shops that cinnamon-scented wreaths and air freshener are harmful to my health. The onslaught began a couple weeks ago with fall decorations and will continue through Christmas. Ugh.

Triggers

Triggers that Stink

Kerrie Smyres

When I was in 5th grade, my teacher sometimes left the door in our classroom open to the workspace she shared with other teachers. Whenever she did, I got a bad headache — from the rose air freshener in the workroom.

In middle and high school, many of my classmates ate fireballs in class. You know, the candy with the artificial cinnamon smell? The one that that’s like a jawbreaker so it lasts forever? You’ve guessed it; I got bad headaches every time someone within smelling distance ate a fireball.

Now I try to buy every product, from deodorant to laundry detergent, unscented or scented with an essential oil I know I can handle. If I can’t get what I want with those requirements, I’ll stand in the store, sniffing all the bottles on the shelf to find one that won’t trigger a headache.

So you can imagine how annoyed I get when a new magazine arrives full of perfume samples. I open the magazine very carefully to avoid getting any scent on my hands, rip out the offending pages and throw them away, preferably outside. If the scent has migrated to other pages of the magazine, I leave it outside for a while to air out.

But there’s an even easier way to get rid of the offending smells. If you subscribe to a magazine, you can call the company and tell them that you want an unscented magazine. Publishers actually bind small amounts of their magazines without the perfume samples. What a brilliant, easy solution!