7 ms·

There are many kinds of VOCs, some harmful and others benign. The human nose is sensitive to certain substances and insensitive to others. For example, the hu

There are many kinds of VOCs, some harmful and others benign. The human nose is sensitive to certain substances and insensitive to others. For example, the human nose can barely smell 1ppm of formaldehyde [1] or 0.000002ppm of damascenone (the fragrance made by roses and added to many products) [2]. That's a difference in concentration of 500,000. Put another way, an overpowering rose smell shows a tiny and harmless concentration. While a light formaldehyde smell indicates a harmful concentration. So you cannot trust your nose to tell you if VOC levels are harmful or not. I used to be like your partner. A whiff of perfume would trigger nasal congestion, itchy eyes, and irritable mood. It got worse over 5 years. It became unbearable, interfering with my work and personal life. I consulted with an allergy doctor. They told me it was incurable and probably won't get better, just avoid perfume. I started doing my own research. I found a study result [0] showing that perfume sensitivity is psycho-somatic. Then I learned stress-reduction techniques and used them to cure myself. Specifically, whenever I smelled perfume, I would practice slow breathing, go for a short walk, or get a drink of water. Gradually, I stopped feeling stress after smelling perfume. After about one month, I used lightly-perfumed (normal) hand soap at my friend's home and felt no discomfort afterward. My life improved a lot. Allergy is a very specific physical process involving the immune system. Doctors have reliable methods to measure this process. Perfume sensitivity is something different. People develop emotional habits of reacting with fear when smelling perfume. When the body enters that triggered emotional state, it releases stress hormones. The stress hormones cause the symptoms of perfume sensitivity. Your partner can cure their-self, as I cured myself four years ago. After they do it, please reply here so I can point others to this thread. [0] http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(06)01696-4/abstract http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(06)01696-4/abst... [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00022470.1969.10466465 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00022470.1969.10... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242146083_GRAS_Flavor_Chemicals-Detection_thresholds https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242146083_GRAS_Flav...

forgotmypw17 6y ago
The studies you cite do not list who funded them, but one of the links is ... a website which sells sneakers! One of the worst VOC offenders! Also, that's a nice story, but I already practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis for other stressors. I also regularly assess myself for stress level so that I know to apply them. When my partner bought a couch that off-gassed from the particleboard for months, I was not stressed by it. I did, however, develop a severe headache, disorientation, and migraine-like symptoms. There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well?
- loopz 6y ago
  Stress is probably higher risk. Notice your triggers and integrate stress reduction at that present time. It's sort of reprogramming your self. Not into NLP though.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    Well, having a gruesome headache and unable to think straight or function is certainly a stressor. As I mentioned, I practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis. I have studied and practiced them for years, from older traditions and today's teachers. I even teach them to others. People often comment on my calm and peaceful state and demeanor. Stress is not the culprit here. The culprit is chemical poisoning.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  Many sofas produce toxic formaldehyde. > There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well? Some VOCs are toxic. Perfumes are not. You can look up their safety data sheets.
cptskippy 6y ago
Are you familiar with skin prick tests? A grid of half inch squares are drawn over the test area, usually your arm. Each square receives a different allergen via pin prick. After a few minutes or sometimes days, the allergist accesses the degree to which you had a reaction in each square. The reactions vary from nothing to blistering. The reactions are isolated to the site of the pin prick. You do not know what allergen was applied to each grid square. It's only after the fact that you learn what you've reacted to. The skin prick test done over my partner's entire back using dozens of allergens to form a comprehensive list of allergies. There was not a 100% reaction to all allergens and there was no way for my partner to know which allergen was applied in each grid. You're going to tell me that my partner's selective reactions to over 100 different skin pricks were all psycho-somatic? I actually find your remarks dismissive and rather offensive.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  Did the allergy doctor do a skin prick test with perfumes? Did I write anything that downplays your partner's problems? Perhaps you think that psycho-somatic problems aren't common, or are somehow the fault of the people suffering from them? Psycho-somatic symptoms are real. I experienced them myself for many years. I do not dismiss your partner's symptoms. Human bodies are complicated and diverse. Finding solutions to health problems requires an open mind and effort to learn and try various potential solutions. Please try not to react defensively to this stranger's words. My intention is to help you and your partner. I am quite certain that your partner's perfume sensitivity and skin allergies are different biological processes. Allergies are a very specific process involving histamines and leading to inflammation. Nobody has demonstrated that process happening because of perfume in the air. It's possible that your partner's skin allergies flare up when the brain releases stress hormones. Stress affects the immune system in complicated ways. Stress can trigger hives [0]. That doesn't make them perfume allergies. Consider this process: Smells perfume -> brain enters fear emotion -> brain releases stress hormones -> immune system increases sensitivity -> infection alert goes off in areas of skin (hives) If this is the case, then you can prevent the hives by preventing the brain from entering the fear emotion state. [0] https://medlineplus.gov/hives.html https://medlineplus.gov/hives.html
bscphil 6y ago
This is something my mother does on a grand scale, and we all probably do on smaller scales. (Obviously plenty of allergies are real, I'm not claiming it's all made up.) For 20 years she's attributed various health problems to allergies. There tend to be 2-3 allergies that she believes she has at any one time, each one lasting for about 5 years. Last I checked, she was "gluten sensitive", that was the main one. Another person I know claims to be allergic to "about 20 to 30 things, but all on a very mild level that combines and accumulates over time". Just the sort of thing that you couldn't, you know, test for. A more determined person would probably hit on one thing and stick with it for a long time. I think "rationality" is not any kind of preventative against getting caught up in this. It's a matter of being in a community, and everyone in the community saying "yeah I discovered I had this problem, it's actually way more common than doctors realize and it had these symptoms, and fixing it improved my life so much." So then you start to think about whether you have had anything that resembles those symptoms, and your brain wheels start to go on the possibility that all your life issues could be solved if you just eliminated whatever it is. Pretty soon you do have the symptoms, you see them every time you encounter this thing. Why didn't you notice it before? You must have been desensitized... and so on. To be clear, I'm not making light of the issue, and I'm definitely not willing to say that this is what is happening to anyone in this thread in particular, but by my observation it's an extremely common problem, one I've fallen into myself before. I literally do not let myself listen to anecdata about allergies, because I know I'll fall for it again. This is all sort of reminiscent of England's famous "catching" psychological issues, or the betwitched children of Salem.
- mleonhard 6y ago
  > Pretty soon you do have the symptoms, you see them every time you encounter this thing. Your comment seems to imply that psycho-somatic symptoms are not real symptoms and people who suffer from them are behaving irrationally. If so, you are incorrect. Psycho-somatic symptoms are real measurable physical problems in the body that are triggered by the brain. They are not imagined problems. For example, my perfume sensitivity triggered real nasal congestion. You could hook up a nasal flow meter and record data showing that my nostrils were blocked. For people with chronic lower back pain, you could connect a sensor to the pain nerves and measure the pain signals going from the lower back muscles into the spinal column. Suffering from a psycho-somatic disorder does not imply that the person is rational or irrational. Psycho-somatic problems arise from everyday life situations. For example, my own perfume sensitivity developed over a year of high pressure at the office. My desk was near the women's restroom. Several times an hour, people wearing perfume would walk by my desk to use the restroom, and then walk by again a few minutes later. I became distracted when I smelled their perfume. I would respond to the distraction by desperately forcing myself to concentrate. When concentrating was difficult, I felt more stress. Gradually, my brain developed an automatic response: smell perfume -> feel anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, this was a self-reinforcing habit. After I recognized the root cause, I was able to un-learn the emotional habit and cure the psycho-somatic disorder. Your tone implies that people develop psycho-somatic disorders after "falling for" some false idea. That is incorrect. Some would consider it extremely condescending and would take offense. When a person suffers from excruciating lower back pain, they are not "falling for" the idea that they have a back injury. They are just suffering. They try to understand why they are suffering. "I have a bad back" is a reasonable explanation. The knowledge of the most common cause of lower back pain is not yet widespread: that lower back pain is usually caused by subconscious tensing of muscles. Please re-examine your bias about psycho-somatic disorders. They are real symptoms suffered by rational people. I assure you that your mother is suffering real symptoms. They are very likely not psycho-somatic. I commend her relentless search for root cause and cure. You could help her: Take her to consult with experts, help her objectively record her symptoms, help her systematically test different hypotheses and interventions, find a fun fitness class and attend it with her, research healthy recipes and cook them together, and make sure she takes enough vitamin D3. My own mother developed cancer and there was little I could do to help her.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

The studies you cite do not list who funded them, but one of the links is ... a website which sells sneakers! One of the worst VOC offenders! Also, that's a nice story, but I already practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis for other stressors. I also regularly assess myself for stress level so that I know to apply them. When my partner bought a couch that off-gassed from the particleboard for months, I was not stressed by it. I did, however, develop a severe headache, disorientation, and migraine-like symptoms. There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well?

loopz 6y ago
Stress is probably higher risk. Notice your triggers and integrate stress reduction at that present time. It's sort of reprogramming your self. Not into NLP though.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Well, having a gruesome headache and unable to think straight or function is certainly a stressor. As I mentioned, I practice stress reduction techniques on a daily basis. I have studied and practiced them for years, from older traditions and today's teachers. I even teach them to others. People often comment on my calm and peaceful state and demeanor. Stress is not the culprit here. The culprit is chemical poisoning.
mleonhard 6y ago
Many sofas produce toxic formaldehyde. > There's also the correlation of various VOCs with long-term health risks. Do you think that is just stress as well? Some VOCs are toxic. Perfumes are not. You can look up their safety data sheets.

cptskippy 6y ago

Are you familiar with skin prick tests? A grid of half inch squares are drawn over the test area, usually your arm. Each square receives a different allergen via pin prick. After a few minutes or sometimes days, the allergist accesses the degree to which you had a reaction in each square. The reactions vary from nothing to blistering. The reactions are isolated to the site of the pin prick. You do not know what allergen was applied to each grid square. It's only after the fact that you learn what you've reacted to. The skin prick test done over my partner's entire back using dozens of allergens to form a comprehensive list of allergies. There was not a 100% reaction to all allergens and there was no way for my partner to know which allergen was applied in each grid. You're going to tell me that my partner's selective reactions to over 100 different skin pricks were all psycho-somatic? I actually find your remarks dismissive and rather offensive.

mleonhard 6y ago
Did the allergy doctor do a skin prick test with perfumes? Did I write anything that downplays your partner's problems? Perhaps you think that psycho-somatic problems aren't common, or are somehow the fault of the people suffering from them? Psycho-somatic symptoms are real. I experienced them myself for many years. I do not dismiss your partner's symptoms. Human bodies are complicated and diverse. Finding solutions to health problems requires an open mind and effort to learn and try various potential solutions. Please try not to react defensively to this stranger's words. My intention is to help you and your partner. I am quite certain that your partner's perfume sensitivity and skin allergies are different biological processes. Allergies are a very specific process involving histamines and leading to inflammation. Nobody has demonstrated that process happening because of perfume in the air. It's possible that your partner's skin allergies flare up when the brain releases stress hormones. Stress affects the immune system in complicated ways. Stress can trigger hives [0]. That doesn't make them perfume allergies. Consider this process: Smells perfume -> brain enters fear emotion -> brain releases stress hormones -> immune system increases sensitivity -> infection alert goes off in areas of skin (hives) If this is the case, then you can prevent the hives by preventing the brain from entering the fear emotion state. [0] https://medlineplus.gov/hives.html https://medlineplus.gov/hives.html

bscphil 6y ago

This is something my mother does on a grand scale, and we all probably do on smaller scales. (Obviously plenty of allergies are real, I'm not claiming it's all made up.) For 20 years she's attributed various health problems to allergies. There tend to be 2-3 allergies that she believes she has at any one time, each one lasting for about 5 years. Last I checked, she was "gluten sensitive", that was the main one. Another person I know claims to be allergic to "about 20 to 30 things, but all on a very mild level that combines and accumulates over time". Just the sort of thing that you couldn't, you know, test for. A more determined person would probably hit on one thing and stick with it for a long time. I think "rationality" is not any kind of preventative against getting caught up in this. It's a matter of being in a community, and everyone in the community saying "yeah I discovered I had this problem, it's actually way more common than doctors realize and it had these symptoms, and fixing it improved my life so much." So then you start to think about whether you have had anything that resembles those symptoms, and your brain wheels start to go on the possibility that all your life issues could be solved if you just eliminated whatever it is. Pretty soon you do have the symptoms, you see them every time you encounter this thing. Why didn't you notice it before? You must have been desensitized... and so on. To be clear, I'm not making light of the issue, and I'm definitely not willing to say that this is what is happening to anyone in this thread in particular, but by my observation it's an extremely common problem, one I've fallen into myself before. I literally do not let myself listen to anecdata about allergies, because I know I'll fall for it again. This is all sort of reminiscent of England's famous "catching" psychological issues, or the betwitched children of Salem.

mleonhard 6y ago
> Pretty soon you do have the symptoms, you see them every time you encounter this thing. Your comment seems to imply that psycho-somatic symptoms are not real symptoms and people who suffer from them are behaving irrationally. If so, you are incorrect. Psycho-somatic symptoms are real measurable physical problems in the body that are triggered by the brain. They are not imagined problems. For example, my perfume sensitivity triggered real nasal congestion. You could hook up a nasal flow meter and record data showing that my nostrils were blocked. For people with chronic lower back pain, you could connect a sensor to the pain nerves and measure the pain signals going from the lower back muscles into the spinal column. Suffering from a psycho-somatic disorder does not imply that the person is rational or irrational. Psycho-somatic problems arise from everyday life situations. For example, my own perfume sensitivity developed over a year of high pressure at the office. My desk was near the women's restroom. Several times an hour, people wearing perfume would walk by my desk to use the restroom, and then walk by again a few minutes later. I became distracted when I smelled their perfume. I would respond to the distraction by desperately forcing myself to concentrate. When concentrating was difficult, I felt more stress. Gradually, my brain developed an automatic response: smell perfume -> feel anxiety and stress. Unfortunately, this was a self-reinforcing habit. After I recognized the root cause, I was able to un-learn the emotional habit and cure the psycho-somatic disorder. Your tone implies that people develop psycho-somatic disorders after "falling for" some false idea. That is incorrect. Some would consider it extremely condescending and would take offense. When a person suffers from excruciating lower back pain, they are not "falling for" the idea that they have a back injury. They are just suffering. They try to understand why they are suffering. "I have a bad back" is a reasonable explanation. The knowledge of the most common cause of lower back pain is not yet widespread: that lower back pain is usually caused by subconscious tensing of muscles. Please re-examine your bias about psycho-somatic disorders. They are real symptoms suffered by rational people. I assure you that your mother is suffering real symptoms. They are very likely not psycho-somatic. I commend her relentless search for root cause and cure. You could help her: Take her to consult with experts, help her objectively record her symptoms, help her systematically test different hypotheses and interventions, find a fun fitness class and attend it with her, research healthy recipes and cook them together, and make sure she takes enough vitamin D3. My own mother developed cancer and there was little I could do to help her.