Taking showers and washing our hands as a way of combating Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) is an idea that has been briefly touched upon in this blog, but I think is important enough to warrant a more in-depth examination here.  Showering/hand washing are two of my favorite tools for lessoning and often completely stopping a MCS reaction in progress.  If I am exposed to a MCS trigger and it gets inside of me I will experience a reaction.  Remember that there is more than one way of getting MCS reaction causing chemicals into our bodies.  We can breathe them in, we can eat or drink them and they can even be absorbed through our skin.  Quickly removing these triggers can be extremely useful. 

 

One thing that took me a long time to realize is that when a MCS trigger has gotten in me it has often gotten on me as well.  If it has gotten on me I can carry the trigger on my cloths, on my skin and in my hair causing repeated re-exposure.  On some occasions  problem causing chemicals can even get from my cloths/skin/hair to other parts of my environment causing MCS triggers to infect furniture, other clothing and even bedding.  How to combat this?  As soon as my situation warrants I remove myself from the trigger, take a really good shower or wash my hands and, if it is called for, change out of the clothing I am presently wearing.  This process has never failed to make me feel better.  Admittedly it is not always a complete cure for the present MCS reaction but it invariably reduces the symptoms and lessens the possibility of continued exposure and cross contamination. 

 

As is often the case for those of us with MCS taking a shower and washing our hands is not always as easy and straight forward as it may appear at first glance.  Of course our biggest challenge is to find soaps, shampoos, etc… that do not cause MCS reactions all on their own.  Assuming we have gotten over that hurdle; the next big question is what do we do when our chosen soap alone does not completely clean an offending substance off of our hands, hair and skin. 

 

I cannot always be in command of everything around me.  There will be times when I will come into direct contact with substances such as motor oil, wet paint, fragrances and residue from certain cleaning agents (these are only a few possibilities of materials that soap alone may does not completely remove from our bodies).  This will happen eventually and is an unavoidable part of living in our modern world.  When this does happen I want to stop being affected by any MCS triggers that I have come into contact with as soon as possible.  I also want minimize the risk of this trigger getting into other parts of my environment.  I will need to get the offending chemical off of me. This is when those of us with MCS need to make some often challenging decisions.

 

When I was a kid my father used to keep a can of white gas around the garage.  The primary purpose of this was to fuel his camping stoves.  His secondary purpose for the white gas was to clean his hands after he was done working on the car.  This substance was noxious but extremely effective at stripping used oil and engine grease off his hands.  Even as a kid when I followed my father’s example and used it to wash my hands I would feel bad for a few minutes but the white gas would evaporate extremely quickly and leave no residue or smell that I can remember.  Of course I do not recommend that those of us with MCS do this activity.  I have no doubt that white gas would cause most of us potentially severe problems, but it does illustrate the nature of a decision I need to make at times.  Is the long term potential for MCS challenges larger for what has gotten on me or will the reactions caused by what I will use to clean myself be worse? 

 

Every sink in my living space has a pump bottle of hand soap next to it.  As mentioned, hand soap alone does not always get an offending chemical off my hands to a required degree.  A solution that I have found, and by no means do I suggest that this is the correct solution for all of us, is to also keep some vodka or rubbing alcohol* near the sinks as well.  Alcohol in conjunction with soap will clean just about anything off of my hands.  Does the alcohol cause me problems?  When I first discovered this solution to my hand washing dilemma it did, as my health has improved it does not seem so bad anymore.  When I first started using it to clean MCS triggers off my skin I had to weigh the potential benefit and the potential harm.  Although the alcohol would cause a reaction that would at times last hours, I often felt that keeping my environment clean was worth the short term set back.  Being spacey for a few hours was worth the eventual pay off of not cross-contaminating my apartment. 

 

One of the great tricks I have found to living with MCS has been removing often harsh triggers from my body before they can cross contaminate other parts of my world. There are many items that can assist in creating this deeper cleaning.  Discovering what you find tolerable will be a matter of intuition and experimentation.  What may be tolerable to you may not be tolerable to me and vice-versa**.  The products I use have at times caused MCS reactions all on their own, but the short term sacrifice has almost always been worth the long term gain of keeping my environment clean.  Don’t hesitate to face making these sometimes difficult choices when they arise.

 

*Not all rubbing alcohol is the same.  One great trick for living with MCS is to ‘Always Read the Label’.  There are two main formulations of 70% Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol on the market.  One is just alcohol and water the other has several other ingredients that are supposed to make it better for the skin.   I have found that those other ingredients almost always create a MCS reaction.  I get the one with water as the only ‘inactive ingredient’.  Even that being said I have still found variation between different brands, ‘Premier’ brand is my favorite, the generic Kroger brand is also good, but Safeway’s generic brand is terrible even though they all list the same ingredients.  High proof vodka is something I have great results with.  As with every definite suggestion I mention there will most likely be some personal experimentation required.

 

**From my experience there is an often large degree of variation between those of us with MCS.  It is this variation that makes creating a definitive list of MCS safe products an extreme challenge.  What is tolerated by one of us is not often tolerated by all of us.  I also find that making a definitive list of triggers that will create MCS reactions in us almost as difficult for the same reason. 

 

This dissimilarity in triggers and our reactions to these triggers is one of the challenges to MCS being fully accepted by the main stream medical establishment.  Science and medicine love direct answers and well defined parameters.  Unfortunately MCS, at this time, offers little in the way of well defined, measurable, repeatable and statistically significant data. 

 

Of course all of this variation makes living with MCS an art form that we get to constantly create in our lives and not so much a scientifically based program we can just plug into.