Let's Talk About Chronic Pain

Hi everyone! Let's talk about chronic pain. For me I do have chronic pain, and it can be debilitating at times. In 2018 I started having pain all over my body with no known cause or source. It was widespread and extremely painful. There were times I could barely walk it hurt so much. I saw it as just another symptom of menopause and something I had to tolerate. At times the pain on a pain scale felt like a 7 or 8.

A year later I received a message in Facebook from a dear friend Dr. Adison Thompson. At that time, she was in the process of getting her doctorate in Naturopathy and she needed me to be a guinea pig for her Iridology course. Iridology is the study of the eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but they are also windows to your health. I agreed happy to help her in any way I could. I sent her a few close-up pictures of my eyes and a few days later she did a video consultation on what she found. A few things that she told me I already knew about, but one thing she said really hit home. She said that I am extremely sensitive to chemicals. It could be environmental, chemicals in what we use, paint, carpet, etc.

That took me down a rabbit hole of researching if there was a correlation between chronic pain and chemicals found in our everyday products. The answer, absolutely. If you have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease or fibromyalgia, then you have a 33% to 55% chance of being super sensitive to chemicals found in everyday products. And those products can make your pain much worse. I made the decision to test it out by removing most of the products I use like shampoo, body wash, shave gel, lotion, makeup, etc. and changing it to products that were natural and didn't have parabens and sulfates in them.

It took me a while, but when I switched everything over within a few days my pain level significantly reduced. The pain was down to a pain scale of 1 or 2. I felt 100% better. I couldn't believe it! Something that simple changed my life.

The advice I want to share with you is if you have chronic pain, it's widespread with no known source you might be one of those people that is sensitive to chemicals. Try removing products that have parabens and sulfates in them. I have a Pinterest account that I listed products that I use that don't cause me any pain. This a safer option than taking more medications to lower the pain because guess what, medications can also increase chronic pain. There are medications that you have to take for health reasons of course but if you remove the chemicals in your everyday products as much as you can then maybe your pain will reduce to a more tolerable level.

Pinterest

Another thing that causes chronic pain is sugar. Sugar found in processed food is extremely inflammatory and will cause significant pain if consumed on a regular basis. Try to lower your intake of processed foods and sugar as much as possible.

There is a diagnosis for those that are sensitive to chemicals. It's called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. There are several symptoms and I have quite a few of them. Here is an article from the Cleveland Clinic.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment

I hope this was helpful. Watch my Youtube video where I discuss this more. Thank you for reading my blog. Take care and be well.