My Human Alarm System

A few days ago, my friend and I decided to take a Bonaire beach day. We lay on lounge chairs at Sorobon Beach Resort and watched windsurfers whip around Lac Bay. By evening, I turned a crispy red. I ran the ampcoil for skin. I thought about applying my usual coconut oil. (Don't @ me. My happy unburnt skin loves it.) Then I googled coconut oil and sunburn. All these warnings about coconut oil making things worse made me question what I know to be true about my body.

I'm sensitive to fragrances and lots of topical ingredients. (For example, if you wash sheets in Tide and I get in that bed, my nose clogs up and my skin gets itchy.) So, first, I dabbed a bit on my burning foot. It instantly soothed. After a few hours, all seemed fine so I applied it to my burnt legs. The next day, my skin seemed happier, so I slathered the after sun lotion on the rest of my body. (Everything I could reach except my back and my face.) At that point, the sun burn looked more like a tan and everything seemed fine. Until last night when I broke out in a burning bumpy red rash everywhere except my back and my face.

I took some activated charcoal, ran the ampcoil for skin again, and also ran the bites cleanse which reduces a histamine response. It's better this morning, but not gone. I'm thinking some saltwater will be just the cure. I'm also thinking about sensitivities. A few months ago, after writing a post in a Lyme survivor's group, a woman asked about Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) sensitivity, wondering if it ever goes away. We ended up getting on a call. This woman was in the throes of Lyme. She had mold toxicity, metal and pesticide poisoning, and EMF overload. Like me, she had gotten rid of all her material possessions due to mold contamination. She was living in a tiny place pretty much scared to eat, drink, or do anything.

I've been there. Lyme disease and all the mystery illnesses like it (think Fibromyalgia, Epstein Barr Virus, Lupus, Hashimotos), thrive in dark, moldy, unhealthy bodies. Our current world, where our water, food, and soil is full of metals and pesticides and our soaps and detergents and after sun lotions are filled with ingredients our bodies don't know what to do with, sets the perfect stage for disease. The disease comes to tell you to knock it off. Slow down. Pay attention to what you're putting in and on your body and how long you're lying in the sun. So, when the woman in the height of her Lyme asked me, "How do you get rid of the sensitivities? Do they ever go away?" I responded, "No. They never go away. But what if instead of thinking of them as nuisance, you thought of the sensitivities as a gift? As a human alarm system?" My human alarm system sent me two messages this week. The first, "Hey girl, you're pretty close to the equator right now. I know you think your LA bod can handle all the tan, but it can't. Less sun next time, K?" The second message was, "I like coconut oil. That's what works for me. Why would you trust google over what we know works? Listen to ME, not google, got it?"

My human alarm system is fierce. I can walk into a building and know immediately if it's got a negative energy in there. I get what I call "helmet head" when there's mold. And I can also tell when something isn't quite right with the air quality. Over the winter while staying with my parents in Vermont, I had helmet head two days back to back. I knew there wasn't mold in the house and I kept thinking about the wood burning stove. (When something keeps nudging me, I know it's intuition telling me to listen.) When I googled "dangers of wood burning stove," information about carbon monoxide poisoning came up. My mom and I checked all the carbon monoxide alarms. They were working and nothing was wrong.

Then she mentioned an air filtration system in the attic that we hadn't been using. We climbed up there, read instructions in another language, burst out laughing about how we couldn't figure the darn thing out and then finally got the machine pumping. The next morning I woke up with a totally clear head. I thanked my human alarm system for letting me know something wasn't quite right. The Better Plan is showing me that similar to the way disease feasts on overloaded dark, dank bodies, clarity thrives when I slow down, pay attention, and listen to my body and my intuition. It's a big reminder to be thankful for my sensitivities. My human alarm system is a gift I never want to go away.