Canaries Are Us

Have you ever heard of how min­ers used to use canaries to test the air in mines? The birds would get ill, or even die, from bad air much more quickly than humans would real­ize that the air was bad, allow­ing the humans to get out of the mine.

Those of us who have seri­ous cases of FMS and CFS/ME are human canaries. We often react far more sen­si­tively to EVERYTHING — med­ica­tions, weather changes, tem­per­a­ture changes, drafts, out­gassing from new uphol­stery or car­pets, VOCs in fresh paint, clean­ing chem­i­cals, pes­ti­cides, air pol­lu­tion, preser­v­a­tives — you name it. Any­thing which puts any kind of stress on your body or your psy­che can pro­voke a flare. Most of us react by try­ing to avoid stres­sors as a main strategy.

We can’t avoid all stres­sors. We can’t man­date that every­one at the gro­cery store refrain from using fra­granced prod­ucts. I’m find­ing that we can’t always count on vital parts of our sup­port net­work stay­ing in place, because peo­ple change. We can’t avoid the weather and its effects on us.

And some­times we need some­thing, like radi­a­tion ther­apy or chemother­apy, to treat another con­di­tion, and we know that it will be a major stres­sor. There is no guar­an­tee as to whether or not you’ll have a flare pro­voked by radi­a­tion ther­apy, of course. If your oncol­o­gist says that you need that in order to treat can­cer, it prob­a­bly isn’t wise to refuse it. 1 How­ever, what you should do is make sure that you take really good care of your­self oth­er­wise, and reduce your body’s over­all stress load.

The best way to deal with being a canary is to take good care of your­self. Take care of the basics by doing all of those things you know you should do anyway.

  • Estab­lish a reg­u­lar sleep sched­ule that ensures that you get plenty of qual­ity sleep, and stick to it. You may need reg­u­lar naps as part of your sleep sched­ule. My rheuma­tol­o­gist pre­scribed brief hourly naps for me at one time. Do what you need to do.
  • Eat enough of the right kinds of foods to nour­ish your body and spirit, and make sure that they’re of good qual­ity, as fresh and free of chem­i­cals as pos­si­ble. Many peo­ple find it bet­ter to eat mul­ti­ple small meals through­out the day rather than to have three larger meals sep­a­rated by many hours of nothing.
  • Make sure that you have a safe, quiet retreat that is clean, free of pol­lu­tants, and quiet. If you’re prone to migraines or oth­er­wise sen­si­tive to light, put in black­out cur­tains so that you can con­trol the light in your safe space.
  • Get enough light. Your body needs it to pro­duce vit­a­min D. If you don’t get out in the sun­shine very often, use a light box. There are some very good, inex­pen­sive ones avail­able now.
  • Get in touch with nature if at all pos­si­ble. Even if you only go out­side for five min­utes a day, you’ll feel more grounded and refreshed for that time.
  • Move. Be gen­tle with your­self, but get up and move at least once every hour. Stretch your mus­cles and get your blood mov­ing. It will help.

1 This isn’t the­o­ret­i­cal, but a response to a reader.

July 6, 2012  Tags: allergens, canaries, chemotherapy, exercise, fragrances, light therapy, sleep, stress  Posted in: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia

One Response

  1. Enemy of Entropy » Blog Archive » Fibrant Living: Canaries Are Us - July 7, 2012

    […] Cur­rent Mood: Hap­pyI missed men­tion­ing an FL post yes­ter­day! It’s one that has been in the works for a while, Canaries Are Us. […]

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