Well before my PAF attacks were recognised, I used to feel quite ill after spraying roses (tired and lethargic). Also if the council came around the streets spraying weeds on pavements that would affect me too. I have to admit I don't spray roses anymore. Also cleaning the bath with a spray cleaner would have an effect too. I now clean the bath and sink with washing up liquid and bicarbonate of soda - it's better than any other cleaner - just try it.
I'm now wondering whether chemicals we use or get close to, such as farmers spraying crops, could lead to AF attacks. We already know that some artificial additives in food can bring on an attack. So I feel sure that sprays containing chemicals could also do the same.
At a meeting many years ago an architect was telling us how new PVC windows gave out unhealthy chemicals. Think about all the chemicals around us, in new carpets, wall paint, new furnishings and clothing too.
I can remember at work asking the cleaner not to spray polish in my office. I hate chemical sprays.
What do you think, could the chemicals we use be triggering our AF?
Jean
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jeanjeannie50
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I quite agree with your line of thought Jean, I have problems with diffusers that friends have in the home .I must give your bath cleaning tip a try, thanks.
Hi Jay, yes do try the bath cleaning tip. I think it's better than anything else. You can't help but wonder about all the chemicals we come into contact with. There's so many, I can't help but wonder whether they could eventually cause AF or other health problems too.
I am sensitive to these diffusers too, so many people seem to have them, I have to ask for them to be removed from the room!I am also sensitive to perfumes and aftershave on other people which makes life difficult.
There is no doubt that synthetic materials such as new carpets put some bad things into the air Jean but experience in Industry tells me that the usual result is flu like symptoms. Whenever we had new carpets in the office you could always expect a rise in sickness levels for a month or two.
Not sure any of this is relevant to AF unless you already have the genetic pre-disposition for it. Without that (as are most of the population) nothing else, bar perhaps some mild breathing problems, happens.
I shared an office with my boss. One wall of it was half covered by a huge cork pin-board, that board hid the fact that the area suffered with mould. Now he had sat in that office for two years longer than me. He started with AF and then me two years later. Can't help but wonder about that. My sister in the US says it's not easy to sell your house there if there is mould. Perhaps it's what we're breathing in, in general. Who knows, just an idea.
We live in an area of France noted for being rainier than average - I chose it so I could have a garden with the sort of plants I grew in England and not a dusty looking plot like we often saw in the south! But damp and mould is a problem in the houses. We have an underground stream running under ours and I have to run the dehumidifier for days in the downstairs guestroom. We live on the first floor as is common in many French houses but the mould is still in the house downstairs
Hi , I was exposed to mould , a lot of it five years ago and it made me really I’ll, fevers , coughing and I now wonder if that’s what has contributed to me getting heart problems.
Its sad, but I guess we'll never know exactly what caused our heart arrhythmias . My AF nurse told me that they have had a sharp increase in young people attending their clinic too.
It’s probably stress, my AF was caused by intense stress. I’m in week 7 , had a few HHR, it’s a bit flippy now but I think it’s my dinner , must of been some hidden enemy somewhere 😊.
So many things in our modern environment have the potential to harm us including the things you mention. I wouldnt be surprised if these things are harmful to our general health and specific areas of health too.
I agree with you Meadfoot, there are probably many things in the environment that are affecting us health-wise. Another that's just occurred to me is the air pollution from cars and planes. My goodness there must be so many others we are totally unaware of. Answering you now I think I may have brought this subject up a few years ago.
Pretty sure it will be a factor - I try to avoid any sprays in the house and if I need to use one I open all windows, wear a mask and spray directly on to a cloth. My OH thinks I’m nuts but I’ve been much better since avoiding chemicals as much as possible.
All I can say though is that they are pretty much unavoidable in most environments these days. Be ultra careful with cosmetics as well.
I think my whole family think I'm nuts, so I try to keep my beliefs to myself these days. I have a dresser in my office at home and my daughter told me I need to clear all the books in it, because she doesn't want to do it when I'm gone. Wonder if she knows something I don't!
Yes, I've noticed the additives in cosmetics and toiletries too. It appears we're hit with chemicals from so many things these days. I feel sure they must play a part in our AF and health in general.
When you think about it,we are not meant to be using and breathing in these artificial products,we are just mammals!The further we get from the natural world,the more trouble we bring on ourselves I think.
I'm quite sure that the rise in breathing issues ( asthma etc) and also the spectrum of autism is interconnected with the prevalence of chemicals in our home, workplace,food, and so on.
I have friends who have so many different sprays and potions ,each for a different purpose ( apparently) anti bac this n that etc.
I often get a headache when visiting!
I use washing up liquid and hot water for most things,bleach in toilets and vinegar for windows and glass.
Stubborn dirt, bicarbonate of soda.
All these products put a good profit into the industry and I wonder at the side results of production,and also the throwaway aspect of all those trigger gun cleaners.
I'm sure you have something there. We were always saying our communal office was a ' sick building'
At one point I was making my own window cleaning liquid. It consisted of vinegar, water and washing up liquid. I don't remember the proportions, but found it on the internet.
I'm sure I saw on Dragons Den a short while ago a couple who were going to sell refillable containers with eco friendly products. I thought it was the best idea I'd heard for a long time.
I think you're right. There are so many unnatural things we now accept as normal that wouldn't have been around, say, when I was a kid. Then there was coal dust and pollen and not too much else - the traffic was hardly negligible compared to today. Everything I buy that can goes straight into the washing machine too with eco-friendly, natural liquids as I find the stuff they leave in new clothing and whatever they're sprayed with affects my breathing a lot these days. We need to get back to natural cleaners etc. as far as possible. Will try the bath cleaner you devised!
Yes, I too now wash new clothing before wearing them. Though I must admit I've never used eco products for that purpose, will do that. Thank you for that suggestion.
Having been brought up on a farm and involved with conventional farming for many years in my work, I would not buy a house next to an arable field for various health reasons. On the positive side, today agriculture is moving to avoid sprays or if essential are more safety conscious. We use minimum chemicals in our house, a tad concerned about the safety of MDF used in shelving, just hope if well painted it seals most of the bad stuff in. Mmmm..getting off topic must stop!
I too was brought up on a farm. My dad used to be concerned about what the cattle were injected with. He grew all our vegetables naturally and spent each evening gardening. On his retirement aged 70 he was a staunch member of Friends of the Earth and wrote articles, re chemicals used in farming, for their magazine.
The only bad thing I can remember eating as a child was white bread. I don't think my childhood diet put me on the path for AF, but who knows!
Indeed Jean Jeanie, we lived surrounded by farmers fields and whrn they sprayed I’d feel very sickly, my chum and I if we were out walking would run off the footpaths if the farmer arrived spraying,it was a awgul coffee smell.....furniture polish also upsets me.....as did Windolene even as a kid when mum cleaned the windows.....I had a boyfriends once whose mum worked at a factory making the room smelliest that cane out forty years back.....the workers would get checked regularly for their health......
It's interesting that you hated the smell of some products as a child Morzine. I guess that could have been a natural body reaction. I wonder if we have suppressed those reactions a little over time, or whether they re-appear as we age.
I think alot has been written about the dangers of those plug in room fresheners. I did use them at one time, but not now. Thank you for your response.
Oh, that made me smile! Yes, I'll do my best to make everyone whole again. I'll never accept having AF and despite BobD saying it can drive people mad searching for a reason. That's what I'll always be doing. Though I'd say I'm more than 80% cured by having a healthier diet than when my AF was really bad.
Hi jeanjeannie, the other day whilst cleaning my teeth I started to ponder about something you posted some time ago, re old type fillings and all that they are made of. I realised , as I gazed into my mouth , that since I started with AF over twenty years ago I have had to have many of my molars replaced with crowns due to teeth breaking. When I first started my episodes were severe and lasted 3 to 4 days. Over the years at the same time as my filled teeth have been replaced by crowns my AF episodes have become very infrequent , last one of any significance was last May and only lasted about 6 hours. I have always put my episodes down to being an anxious sort, but as I scrubbed away it did make me wonder ,as over the last 20 years I have gone through many very anxious times and yet my episodes have lessened considerably. Hopefully this will stay the same ,who knows, but it does make you wonder doesn't it? Bicarb and hot water is great for unblocking sluggish emptying sinks!
Yes, that's right, I think old fillings have a lot to answer for. My amalgam ones are all removed and only tooth coloured fillings now. Root fillings are not considered too good health wise either these days. Good that your AF appears to have decreased as you've had old fillings removed.
I have some soda crystals to put down the sink and it's also meant to kill moss on paths. Some elderly friends told me about them and bought me some. Hmm think I'll go and put it on the side path now. Can't be used around plants or grass.
PVC windows are banned from use in buildings in a lot of EU countries as they produce highly toxic nerve gas when they burn, endangering the nervous systems of firemen. I always used timber steel or aluminium windows on my projects. I live in an all wooden house now.
Dr Jack Wolfson, holistic cardiologist in Arizona here in the USA, would agree with you. He tests for all kinds of toxins that affect the body. He's found that many of the toxins we are subjected to can cause Afib. I wish I could afford to fly out there and see him but I don't have deep pockets. He's helped many people who've developed Afib from toxin exposure. Just because other Drs might poo poo his knowledge only tells me those Drs don't care to find out. Just like the Drs who poo poo anything about the vagus nerve. Too easy to just throw pills and do procedures rather than find a root cause. I suffer from mold too. Told the Drs when I was in the hospital ER one time and I was laughed at. People can actually die from serious health problems from mold. I also am bothered by other chemicals so I use natural cleaners. I can hardly walk by the aisles in the stores where the cleaners are. I live in Florida with a tropical climate so mold is everywhere all year round.
Let them laugh Belinda, in the future we'll be found out to have been right. There's very few doctors around now who would check on your diet being a healthy one. They'd rather prescribe some pills!
Good to find out what makes afib worse. Candle fumes, air fresheners - whether spray or plug in, joss sticks, spray cleaners, anything that makes the air around me ‘heavy’ will make me worse. It takes time and patience to work out what does it but it’s worth the trials.
Yes, it certainly does take time to discover what affects us. Though I think we with AF are all pretty much similar and I bet we all react much the same to inhaling air pollutants.
It's a strange world at the moment, though I think people are becoming more aware of what affects their health. Like you I dislike sprays.
I'm sure you are right. I have sensitivity to smells that comes and goes. Sometimes the smell of even washing up liquid or my hand cream is overpowering though mostly it's ok . I hate smelling perfumes but essential oils are fine. I can't paint rooms anymore. The smell of paint makes me feel ill. I am convinced the increasing presence if chemicals all round us is responsible for a lot of chronic ill health.
Thanks for your reply Auriculaire. I agree with you about paint. I had to sleep in another room for many weeks after my bedroom was painted. When I had a new bed it was the same, I couldn't stand the strong smell of it.
We have a large store over here in the UK that has designer clothes at reduced prices. The racks are jam packed with clothes etc. It makes both myself and my daughter feel ill when we go in their and stay too long..
I never buy new clothes apart from bike gear, shoes and underwear . Everything else comes from the Secours Populaire which is the most common charity shop here that is not run by the church. The prices are rock bottom as well so I always make a donation when I go. I get plates and glasses there too. Carpet fitters here are awful. They glue the entire carpet down . Most of our carpets are wool rugs on wood or laminate flooring but I wanted a fitted carpet for the downstairs guest room for ease of cleaning. It was almist six months before I stopped noticing the smell of the glue! I only use soap , don't wear make up anymore and wash my hair once a month. I only put on hand cream if my hands feel dry but I do moisturise my face everyday. As for cleaning I maintain that dirt is better for the environment , vaccuum cleaners use electricity so only do it when I can't stand it any longer. My husband doesn't notice dirt at all but he is ace at messing things up!
I admire your attitude to life. Being brought up on a farm I was always with dirt, we kids ate blackberries straight from the hedge and into our mouths as we did with any orchard fruit. Our milk was straight from the cows, raw and unpasteurised. None of us, and we were a large family, was ever sick. Caterpillars, slugs and their poo were washed off cabbage and lettuce and we never gave it a thought. I can remember sucking icicles, which I now guess probably had insects trapped in them. To this day I'm not prone to vomiting. We weren't mollycoddled and roamed free, our parents never wondered where we were and somehow we always knew when it was a meal time. Todays children are so much more limited and to be honest the way the world is now, I don't blame parents for being that way with them. Those kids are missing out on so much though. I wonder was sort of ailments they'll end up with as they grow older?
I guess most of us on this forum led similar lives, though I don't know how it was in cities. Playing on bomb sites I guess!
I remember my AF nurse telling me that they were getting a lot more young people with AF now. I just wonder why that is. The only thing I can think of is food and drink additives are more common now.
I bet you never had asthma! There is far too much over cleanliness these days. When I was a kid we only had a bath once a week- for the first 7 years of my life we did not have a bathroom . All these anti bacterial sprays and cleaning products are toxic- we have loads of bacteria inside us anyway. Eating with hands dirtied with soil is healthy - soil bacteria are good for the microbiome. Your childhood sounds idyllic.
I believe what you say could very well be, that chemicals in our environment -- and maybe even just aerosol sprays in general -- can trigger a-fib. My chest becomes constricted when I use hairspray; I don't go into a-fib, but it certain causes a respiratory reaction which for some could lead to an a-fib episode. Good of you to bring this up Jean.
I like to blame food and drink additives, but yes additives to sprays are probably triggers of AF too. The more we share our thoughts, the more chance we have of discovering how it's caused.
I hope you're right, i.e. finding our cause for episodes, as I had one early this morning with no apparent trigger I can think of. Wishing you well, Jean -- from another Jean.
I always get them in the early morning while still in bed. It lasted 1 hr. 40 min. which wasn't too bad, and symptoms were mild. I can think of nothing to have triggered it.
I have mild sleep apnea, not enough for a device. And you're right -- I may well have been breathing too shallow last night because my cat allergies acted up the last two days. I have a cat who attaches to me like velcro. causing breathing problems sometimes.
I completely agree; I use as little purchased cleaning products as possible. Which? consumer magazine gives the most effective eco-friendly products (unfortunately some are useless, and expensive as well).
What really surprised me fairly recently is that regularly burning candles isn't good for one either. Makes me wonder about my childhood where we all huddled round a coal fire.
I think it's because a lot of candles now have scents in them and these are chemical. I don't buy eco cleaning stuff. It doesn't clean as well. I just clean a lot less and enjoy it when it is clean but then let it run down till I can't stand the dirt any longer. It only gets done on rainy days anyway as I'd rather be out in the garden.
Good choice! A damp microfibre cloth followed by a dry one have taken the place of most of my cleaners (when I'm not in the garden too, but too early here).
Joss sticks not good either Irene, though you can buy some now that are meant to be ok.
I always use a natural soap for washing my body, though I've been using Clinique products on my face for a while as my daughter had loads of free samples. She tipped them on her bed for myself and my sister to see what we wanted and she said we swooped down on them like seagulls. It made me laugh because we were.
Yes, coal and log fires, the soot from them must surely have gone into our lungs! That's something I've never really considered.
Samples are a necessity for me; I have very sensitive skin and always ask for a sample before purchasing anything for my skin, my face in particular. Clinique samples, I would have swooped too!
Yes, our heart relies on chemical reactions between our electrolytes to pump in NSR, and we each have different trigger points to upsetting this. The addition of modern chemicals into the mix may well have an effect, though not enough work has been done to prove such. In my view chemicals can cause a reaction and looking at the wider picture the increase in chemical use does coincide with an increase in our type of heart problems.
It's funny you should say this Jean but come to think of it I live in a village surrounded by fields where the farmers grow various crops each year and my AF is always worse in the summer. Could it be a contributing factor that this is the time when alot of crop spraying takes place? Certainly something to think about. 🤔
Yes, we need to keep our minds open to the fact that chemicals which are hitting us from all directions like the air we breathe, indoor surroundings and food. I don't know how we can make it all right again. I live by the sea, but in my little town our main central roads have a high level of pollution from the amount of cars with people coming to visit.
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