Allergy - Cleaning for Allergy and Asthma Sufferers

Tickles in the throat, sneezing, coughing, yep - allergy season is here again. My daughter recently had a bout with asthma. The strange thing is, she hadn't had any problems for a couple of years. In looking at the possible triggers - She had a new batch of puppies at her dad's. While the 2 dogs didn't seem to bother her, the addional puppies seemed to put her over the edge. To make matters worse, since we hadn't had problems for a couple of years, I had become lax in some of the cleaning that I would have done when she had problems every year. Once I realized what her problem was, I immediately started cleaning for asthma. That means thoroughly vacuuming walls, behind furniture, matresses, pillows, upholstery, screens, and vents, and dusting every crevice- including things like behind the tv and stereo inside the cabinet, the backs of furniture. I normally dust the ceiling fans and blinds, but if you kinda skip those, you need to pay more attention especially if you have any allergies or asthma in your home. Otherwise those blades are just spreading the dust around the room. A quick carpet clean and changing air filters and furnace filters finishes up the cleaning job. You also want to change your hand towels everyday, just in case it is a virus triggering the response. If you have pets, keep them clean and brushed, and their living areas cleaned. Keep pets out of the bedrooms of affected people. The things that typically trigger asthma is actually pretty long- House dust mites found in carpeting, mattresses, bed linens, toys, upholstered furniture, dampness, poor ventilation, unvented cooking, humidifiers Animal-derived allergens from dogs, cats, rodents, and birds. Mold found in carpeting, walls, and windows, caused by leaks, poor ventialtion, water damage, or dampness. Nitrogen oxides produced by space heaters or gas-fueled cooking stove, used with poor ventilation. Wood Smoke from backyard pits, or wood stoves or fireplaces, used with poor ventilation, or faulty equipment causing fumes to come back into the room. Fumes from cleaners, aerosols- like hairsprays, perfumes and even air fresheners, pesticides, formaldehyde found in some older household products. Viral respiratory infections - exposure to infected people Endotoxins from bacteria growing in soil, humidifiers, and other moist places. Cockroach allergen Tobacco smoke Excess weight. If there is one thing you can do to minimize allergy or asthma suffering- it is to become a vacuuming fanatic. The more you get into that bag, the less you have floating around in the air. It's healthier, and you'll have less dusting to do in the long run. Now you can breathe easier! Carole is the author of "Secret Confessions of a Clean Freak". If you love a really clean home, but Hate to clean it, you'll want her handbook of secrets for your very own. You can get it here - http://CleanFreak.CommonSenseLiving.com Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carole_Pagan Allergy - React to Chemical Additives: Hypnosis to Treat Allergies to Environmental Toxins Allergies and Immune System Disorders: Part 2 The first article of this four part series describes the vast array of immune system diseases which are a growing pandemic in our society today. It also outlines three potential causes for this pandemic within our civilization. Within these next articles each cause will be explored in depth, and strategies of treatment using modern hypnotherapy techniques will be described. This article will describe the way our bodies often over-react to chemicals in our environment and in our food, and how hypnosis can be used to change these reactions. There can be little doubt that our bodies are assaulted every day with a wide variety of chemicals that have not existed at all for the last million years of our evolution as a species. Chemical pesticides, fertilizers, genetically engineered DNA, antibiotics and hormones fed to industrially raised animals are present in nearly all the foods we eat. In addition, processed foods contain such toxic additives as refined sugar, artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives. Try as we may to eat organic it is very difficult to protect ourselves completely against these additives. Even the way we process and store food introduces toxic chemicals and alters the vitamins and proteins in food. Frying in hot oils and the use of transfatty acids in processed foods like margarine are just a couple of examples of this. Likewise, the air we breathe and the water we drink are contaminated with innumerable chemical agents. Quite apart from human activity, the natural world is filled with molds, mildews, bacteria, and other substances which have toxic properties. I certainly recommend that we do our best to eliminate these elements from our lives. But often our body's reaction to these chemicals is far out of proportion to the real dangers they represent. When this happens doctors would say that we are "allergic" to these substances. These allergic reactions may incapacitate us with far greater efficiency than these chemicals on their own could ever do in the tiny doses to which we are exposed. An obvious example is the bee sting. While a bee sting's venom is a serious toxin, fatal to anyone in large enough doses, most of us experience a sting as a brief, if painful, nuisance. But to some individuals, this sting is a death sentence without radical medical intervention. The immune system goes into full Battle mode against this perceived threat, which can cause death by asphyxiation in a few minutes in a response called "anaphylactic shock". To a much lesser extent our immune system can cause ugly symptoms in response to such mild toxins as the smell of gasoline, dust, molds, animal dander, and the proteins in such foods as corn and wheat. I myself once reacted very strongly to all of the above mentioned toxins in a debilitating condition called "environmental sensitivity", a condition which led to frequent bouts of chronic fatigue, as well as sinus congestion, headaches and asthma. So how do hypnotic techniques help us combat these conditions? First, we must understand that the source of these reactions is within the subconscious mind. It is NOT the chemicals themselves that are doing this to us. It is the immune system's response that is the problem. After all (I used to grumble to myself) many people can live in moldy houses or smell gasoline without being affected in any way. Once this is accepted we can see that hypnosis, the primary strategy for accessing subconscious programming, MUST be a part of any long term solution to this condition. The alternative is symptom suppression with drugs. We must convince the client's subconscious mind in hypnosis that this particular toxin is simply not a threat to the body in the tiny doses that the body is experiencing. We do this by building positive associations in subconscious memory to the smell or taste of these substances, because it is the taste and smell of these things, even subconsciously perceived, which triggers these reactions. Let me illustrate this with an example. A client was experiencing an unexpectedly severe asthmatic reaction to the smell of a new carpet in his home, a carpet which was out gassing industrial solvents including formaldehyde. In a hypnotic state I had him access the peculiar smell with his hypnotically enhanced imagination, a process referred to as "olfactory hallucination". This process must be accompanied by reassurances that the client's body will not react to this smell in any way. Otherwise, this hallucination has been known to trigger an allergic response in the hypnotized subject. We failed to find any negative memory associated with this smell. Apparently the body just, understandably, found it toxic. I then spoke to his subconscious mind. I told it that this smell was quite safe, that from now on this smell would always remind him of the beauty and pleasure of his beautiful new home, of which he was quite proud, and the new loving wife who shared that home with him. I built up these joyous feelings while he continued at my instruction to breathe in the smell of new carpets, which is now, I suggested, the smell of happiness and romance and a safe home. In one session, his allergic reaction was gone. Another client who loved cats found herself allergic to them, with strong sinus congestion, burning and sneezing. We discovered in trance that her subconscious mind associated the cat odor, a smell which she was consciously unaware of, with traumatic events from her childhood, connected to a critical mother, in a house with cats. First, we used olfactory hallucination to follow this scent back to what it was "...your nose remembers about this smell that you have forgotten." After rescuing her inner child from these memories of abuse, she found a new home in her imagination with a very safe and loving and affectionate new mother - who had cats, of course. I then encouraged her to breathe in this wonderful smell of cats in the context of this safety and love. "Now breathe into every part of your body this wonderful smell of love. Notice how good it feels." Then I anchored this new response to the client's daily experience of cats in this way: "Now, every time your subconscious mind smells the wonderful aroma of cats, your body remembers this wonderful new mother, and how much love and safety she offers." After one session she found herself able to eliminate these allergic responses simply by remembering to call in this vision of her inner mother every time she felt her symptoms begin. Usually one session with a responsive subject is enough to deal effectively with one specific allergen, especially if the client is willing to practice feeling these new feelings and recalling these new memories on their own. (Alas, patients with mental disorders or organic brain disease make poor subjects for this type of work.) Multiple sessions are of course required for a large number of allergies. For food allergies we can follow the taste, hypnotically induced and magnified into a "gustatory hallucination" into the time when this taste brought with it something unpleasant. While the conscious mind has no recollection of these "triggering events", the subconscious mind can recall them readily in a good subject. This process often requires the transformation of memories through the rescue and nurturing of the inner child in order to find resolution.