Yesterday a really good friend called me and said she had gone to see an allergist doctor and they told her she was allergic to so much shit she was going to end up having to 'live in a bubble'... come over to the dark side! For over 8 years now I have been poked fun at and told I am "the girl in the bubble", supposedly allergic to just about everything- but in reality that is kinda off base. What I have found over the years, as my mind and body matures together and I can more clearly point to the things that seem to be my own little bits of kryptonite is that I thrive when things are in a state of natural balance, when I am in nature and not exposed to some of humanity's recent chemical inventions. I believe this goes for food allergies too.
With the dawning of mass scale farming combined with the use of pesticides as a regular practice, plus adding in chems to our foods as preservatives, dyes and flavors I am not exactly sure how eating all this non food stuff isn't making us all run for the trees in search of relief from our ills. I recently had the opportunity to see the inside of a fairly natural and clean dairy farm milking room and was shocked to smell and discover all the chemicals being used in there and on the cows- my first thought was "this is where food allergies come from" - not from food but from our now world wide acceptance that this mass production method is the best way to get food to all of us. Ways which require keeping germs off the turf (by law) then drinking & eating a little bit of bleach and iodine each time you have a glass of milk. I also had the opportunity to see organic farms doing these things too - wiping each of the organic eggs with a Clorox wipe before putting them in the cartons for sale. The usual rebuttal is that a little drop of bleach will dilute and is no big deal, but we are so out of control on a regular basis with all the products being used there is no possible way to measure all the chemical and unhealthy exposures we now come in contact with & swallow on a daily basis. There is no doctor that has a scale to measure our modern style of life in this way. I know some people may disagree but I am steadfast on my personal theory that we are sick, we have cramps, headaches, cancer, MCS, food allergies, pollen allergies, autoimmune disease, any BS sickness you can think of as a result from our degraded environment- aka the cliche & broad catch word 'pollution' of our air, water and food.
We are not reacting to food , grass and trees (or whatever your allergy might be) directly- but our bodies are reacting to the ways we have altered these natural things, so that our bodies will begin making anti-bodies against substances that should be OK. In the case of food, the case of spraying lawns with chems, spraying trees to kill bugs, all this is really just making us sick..for the vanity, the cash flow, and to keep the over grown population in a state of so called well fed peace.
Next time you get the urge to poke fun at one of the many people (like me) who've already gotten sick from all the modern experiments, think about the ways in which you may be contributing to their illness - by buying into our collective ill health through consumerism, fast foods, the white picket fence and the neglect of the one thing that absolutely supports us in every way... nature. If anything will make one take notice of where everything begins and what really sustains our life, it is getting sick because the most basic element is missing- and that will always be nature in it's perfect balance.
(unless you are a moon geek who thinks we will thrive in a bubble on the moon as soon as we bomb it enough times and get some water, in that case don't read my last statement...) ;)
The irony is, nature is not the bubble- but rather the illusion that the human race needs all this junk to survive, to be happy, to live is a collective bubble that will burst itself when the load becomes greater then the faux happiness it can give.
XoXo
Right on Leslie.
ReplyDeleteNice post. I agree.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I really love your blog, found it a few weeks ago.
I feel totally identified with your article Leslie!
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Eva
I couldn't agree more. It angers me how so-called 'experts' say "oh, a little bit of this or that chemical doesn't cause harm" but what about all of these chemicals in concert? We are exposed to so many things without even realizing it, and I believe that we are only beginning to see what the effects will be on human health.
ReplyDeleteThanks Linda, Katy and Eva - I know there are bunches of us out there who feel this way. Thanks for speaking up. :)
ReplyDeleteStephanie-
That is a good word for it "in concert" - because it is the symphony of chems that is so harsh, not just the one instrument in the corner. I always come back to the point that they have not even come close to inventing a way to measure the effect of these exposures in combination. It's alot like building a house with toxic materials- each one may be considered safe or mildly toxic on it's own, but when they become a whole entire house combined together it transforms into a sick unhealthy place to sleep and live.
xoxo
Very well said Leslie.
ReplyDeleteThe human body can't evolve fast enough to match the rate new chemical compounds are being created, nor can it adapt to the ever-increasing range of exposures delivered to the body every day.
We canaries are just at the crest of the wave. We had a big exposure to mold, pesticides, pollution, whatever, and now we are the way we are and reacting to the world as it is today. I think it's only going to be 1-2 more generations before it just starts happening to everyone, without the tipping-point exposure most of us had. It's probably already happening in China but their government will be able to keep a lid on it for a while.
When everybody else gets it, maybe then we'll be able to get some decent health care. But we should resist the urge to tell everyone "I told you so", and instead lead by example and show them the way.
Perhaps by then the intellectual capacity of Americans will improve, and they won't see the message like the one that Leslie has shared as "liberal" or "environmentalist" like they are trained to do now, but instead see it as common sense.
Mr. Lou Cheese -
ReplyDeleteon spot!
Thanks Leslie. It goes without saying, but you're already doing a great job of leading by example and clearing a path for common sense.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can be feisty at times, so it's probably OK if you tell a couple of people "I told you so" when it comes to chemicals-just make sure they understand cajun!
Leslie these two posts are the voice of your strongest self. I am at exactly the same place, which happens to be a field surrounded by barbed wire (barbed wire!) in Bend, Oregon. We literally live in 'that bubble' a golden colored wagon that people aren't sure they 'get' and for sure don't get why we live this way.
ReplyDeleteJudgment is a very easy activity and much more convenient than being informed and truly aware. Informed and aware means a people much take action that is different than the actions they take now.
Poking fun is the act of cowardice, and when cowards congregate that is called a band of cowards.
The daily lives of those of us who live with the environmental affects of a chemical norm face incredible opposition most of them are invisible to the 'public'.
I commend your voice with this article (and the choice to move from the Mush) and know the choice is difficult yet of prime important.
You are reaching a powerful new plateau. Take care.
Mokihana
I agree with you 90% of the way :)
ReplyDelete"I recently had the opportunity to see the inside of a fairly natural and clean dairy farm milking room and was shocked to smell and discover all the chemicals being used in there and on the cows- my first thought was "this is where food allergies come from" - not from food but from our now world wide acceptance that this mass production method is the best way to get food to all of us."
I think there's more going on than chemical overexposure. Food allergies are endemic to out species because we're not well-adapted to eating < 50 different foods.
Pre-civilized humans ate hundreds, even thousands of different species ... they are them seasonally, they ate nutrient dense wild versions of the crops. They essentially engaged in food rotation :)
Once we started moving away from that, people became less robust and less healthy. And then we started having more allergic reactions to food.
All of the chemicals and artificial crud we put into food now is a big accelerant. But the root of the problem, IMO, is that we started treating our food supply like it was 'human fuel' and had no value beyond how many calories it contained.
Hey ERik!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your point too - i think we have become very unhealthy from depending on foods which are only dead in the grocery aisles.
I, myself can hardly digest any raw foods anymore because of the damage to my organic from inheriting Celiac Sprue... I find this to be highly un-natural and eating cooked only allows me to heal but is a bandaid on a much larger (larger scale) problem we are having with food. Scary to think too, we are evolving in an unhealthy way and passing down illness now that is food related.