So Many Things, Part 1 - Essential Oils

I have so many things rolling around in my head that I need to get out - things that affect the disabled as well as the rest of the population. So today, I tackle Part 1, which I believe will become a running series of things I need to get out of my head. Today's topic: the rise of the Essential Oils fad. This trend disproportionately affects disabled children because families often buy into alternative medicine when they believe traditional medicine has failed them. It is terribly difficult to sort through the immense amount of information available on the Internet and make heads or tails of what is good information versus disinformation. It is my hope to educate, not berate.

Essential Oils

Medicine is medicine and everything comes from nature. Even the chemicals churning in a lab beaker were derived from something natural else we are talking about supernatural and that’s a topic for another day. So when I hear something being hocked as a “natural alternative” to medicine, I cringe. Essential Oils are today’s panacea. They often smell nice and are now being sold at MLM parties. But are they even safe? Let’s break this all down.

A medicine is generally defined as “a compound or preparation used for the treatment or prevention of disease, especially a drug or drugs taken by mouth” (Google, 2018). However, we all know drugs can be topical – that is, applied to the skin like creams and whatnot. If you have ever had a rash or poison ivy, you’ve probably thought about hydrocortisone cream or ointment to quell the itch. There are very few side effects with this drug if used topically and it can be used during pregnancy under the advice of a physician (WebMD, 2018). Well that’s not natural, you say? Think again.

Though the tubes you pick up at the pharmacy are generally lab created, hydrocortisone is a fancy term for the principal glucocorticoid produced by our adrenal cortex (glands that sit on your kidneys), typically referred to as cortisol (NIH, 2018). Cortisol is a natural hormone your body produces in times of stress. It regulates blood pressure, blood sugar, controls sleep cycles, manages how we use carbs, fats, and proteins, and it helps give us a boost of energy to keep us going. But the reason you use it for poison ivy is because of one its main properties – it reduces inflammation, which is why you are so bumpy and itchy (WebMD, 2018). So the smart pharmaceutical scientists found a way to recreate this natural hormone safely and effectively in the lab and put in a tube for you to use in small doses for these itchy emergencies. How cool is that?

Oh but you want something that isn’t a hormone? So you turn to the essential oils because they are 100% natural and safe, right? Wrong. Let’s just talk about ones commonly touted for poison ivy and other rashes.

 

Calendula Oil

Calendula oil is derived from a marigold plant (and not the ones you grow out in your yard – those are ornamental marigolds). This plant is considered a drug but it’s marketed as a supplement. Yes, a drug. It is not safe for breastfeeding or pregnant mothers to use topically or ingest and could cause a miscarriage (WebMD, 2018). It can also be dangerous to use if you take antidepressants (WebMD, 2018). Those who are allergic to the ragweed family could have serious allergic reactions to this drug as well (WebMD, 2018). Not such a great alternative.

Chamomile Oil

This oil is also derived from a plant that is in the ragweed family and thus has the same allergy problems. It too is a drug marketed as an herbal supplement. An additional problem with this drug is that it contains coumarin which thins your blood and so you cannot use this product if you are taking blood thinners or are scheduled for any type of surgery (or have any health matters that affect the blood). It is also not recommended for pregnant or breastfeeding women. And most ironic, skin creams with chamomile can cause allergic eczema and irritate the eyes – not exactly what you want for poison ivy (WebMD, 2018).

Peppermint Oil

Peppermint oil comes from the Peppermint leaf. It frequently causes allergic dermatitis (which is actually the same thing poison ivy causes) when used topically on the skin (NIH, 2010). I’ll just leave this here for you to ponder.

Lavender Oil

While its scent might help you relax, rubbing it on or ingesting lavender oil is considered unsafe for prepubescent boys because it interrupts hormones and could result in abnormal breast growth. Its effects on young girls are not even known. There is no information on the safety for pregnancy or nursing mothers so the advice is to steer clear of it if this applies. It is also possible this oil could interfere with anesthesia (WebMD, 2018). That’s quite enough for me to just say no to lavender oil.

The list of essential oils goes on and on as do the side effects and safety warnings. What’s more is that because these oils are marketed as a supplements, they are not held to the same standards as a drug in their manufacturing process and can even include ingredients not listed on the label (American Cancer Society, 2018).

Essential oils have become a pop culture phenomenon. Companies are cashing in on marketing essential oils as “safe alternatives” to traditional medicine but are not lawfully mandated to test these drugs for safety. They are not lawfully forced to list all the ingredients on the labels. They even are not lawfully required to put the actual drug they are selling in the bottle. In other words, you might have thought you bought peppermint oil, but instead bought snake oil.

Save the essential oils for your diffuser and instead use an FDA approved medicine for you and your family. Essential oils might smell nice, but is it really worth the risk?

References

https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-10402-859/hydrocortisone-topical/hydrocortisone-topical/details

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMHT0022157/

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/what-is-cortisol

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-235/calendula

https://www.webmd.com/diet/supplement-guide-chamomile#2-5

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21144345

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-838/lavender

https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/complementary-and-alternative-medicine/dietary-supplements/fda-regulations.html

Broken Wings

Years ago horrible people did unspeakable things. We sent our beautiful baby butterfly into their care because that’s what we were supposed to do. But when they saw that our beautiful butterfly had wings that were decorated differently than the others, the horrible people began to pull at his wings. Little by little, each day, his wings were tattered and torn a sliver more. But the horrible people would lie to us and tell us he had torn his wings, himself. We tried very hard to find ways to encourage him not to hurt his wings. We tried to work with the horrible people to fix problems that might make our baby butterfly display this self-punishing behavior while he was in their care. Nothing seemed to help. And so over time, we watched our baby butterfly begin to lose his ability to fly. Finally, one day our baby butterfly came home wingless. Broken. He could barely walk. It was then we learned the truth. Our beautiful baby butterfly told us the horrible people had been the ones tearing off his wings all along. But it was too late. The tattered remnants of wings were all that were left of a faded memory of flying.

Wingless and flightless, our butterfly was welcomed no longer in other butterfly circles. So we took our beautiful butterfly to many specialists who had helped others make use of broken wings. But it seemed none had ever worked with a butterfly that was so different and had also lost its wings. The specialists would try many different techniques to restore flight. Some particularly bad specialists didn’t believe that the horrible people pulled them off and instead blamed our beautiful butterfly. They would conclude that he pulled his own wings off because his wings were different. They would lecture us that we needed to get our butterfly into more social butterfly activities and that would help him learn to fly again. But he had no wings. They wouldn’t listen to us. And without wings and without flight, our beautiful butterfly was still shunned by the other butterflies. Our beautiful butterfly began to lose the will to stand.

Finally years later a butterfly doctor recognized our beautiful butterfly’s problem – he could not fly because he had been abused by the horrible people. They had ripped off his wings because they feared his differences. And they had traumatized him and disabled flight. It was not our beautiful butterfly’s fault. He began to see new specialists who helped traumatized wingless butterflies cope with not having flight in hopes that someday they could learn to fly in new ways. But the specialists weren’t trained in helping differently decorated butterflies and so their techniques didn’t work.

One day, our butterfly could no longer stand without assistance. Our beautiful butterfly had developed new complications from his wing loss that were serious. We took him to several butterfly hospitals but no one knew what to do and so just sent him home without help. Our butterfly had developed a stinger like a wasp and at times would sting us like an angry hornet believing we were someone else. Other times, he would believe he was still that baby butterfly and the horrible people were in the room ripping at his wings. There were many other insect manifestations that would appear. Each time our beautiful butterfly would come out of these states scared, confused, and distressed. A new specialist was able to figure out that the trauma had caused him to develop Disassociative Insect Disorder which is known to affect butterflies who have been through serious abuse at a young age.

Today our butterfly is all grown up but he still cannot fly. He has tried to go out into the butterfly social world but has not been successful. Even when the other butterflies know of his flight difficulties, he is shunned when he cannot fly just like them. Today, he no longer trusts other butterflies and has vowed to become a solitary insect.

Years ago horrible people did this to him. Today, others continue to do their bidding.

It's Over.

Hope for democracy has crumbled. Our republic has been seized by white supremacist oligarchs who wish to make this nation one of an authoritarian oligarchic society. It is no mystery that our Congress and Senate have not been part of a check or balance for quite some time. And now with Justice Kennedy’s retirement from the US Supreme Court, the court system will now become another extension of the corrupt administration. This is a very bleak moment in US history.

The irony here is that most of the US citizens do not want this. The majority are against the policies that have been creeping into place over the past couple years.

“American voters oppose 66 - 27 percent the policy of separating children and parents when families illegally cross the border into America, according to a Quinnipiac University National Poll...” (Quinnipiac University, 2018).

“American voters also support 79 - 15 percent allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, so-called "Dreamers," to remain and ultimately to apply for citizenship” (Quinnipiac University, 2018). 

“American voters oppose 58 - 39 percent building a wall along the border with Mexico” (Quinnipiac University, 2018). 

“Most American Voters Disagree With Trump On Key Issues, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Keep Climate Protections, Obamacare, But No Wall” (Quinnipiac University, 2017).

So then it seems the foxes have infiltrated the hen house and are systematically eating all the hens. This is what is called a coup d'etat; a faction took over our Democratic Republic all while we watched in disbelief. It reminds me of how we all felt when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center back in 2001 – this just couldn’t possibly happen on US soil, right? Wrong. It could and it did.

For the past year and a half, we’ve all sat here trying to muddle through the chaos hoping for that golden moment.

We kept hoping the FBI would come forward with formal treason charges against Trump and his minions for having allowed Russia to infiltrate our electoral system and possibly more. 

We kept hoping that someone within the Republican party was going to finally stand up to this faction and get them out. 

I think some had even hoped Barack would suit up in a Superman costume and save the day. 

Well, none of this has happened and here we are. Regardless of what Agent Robert Mueller and the FBI reveals, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and now soon the Judicial Branch will all have been compromised. This is how our Democracy died.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? 

References
National (US) Poll Home - National. (2017). Quinnipiac University. https://poll.qu.edu/national/

Mean ̶g̶i̶r̶l̶s̶ Adults

This movie is one of my all time favorites. It’s funny and completely over the top and yet it manages to be realistic by bringing to light passive aggressive behavior among adolescent girls. In reality, this behavior isn’t restricted to one gender. And there are some mean teens who never outgrow this adolescent state and become mean adults.

Passive aggressiveness is still aggression. Ofttimes, it gets ignored because the aggressor isn’t inflicting physical abuse. But make no mistake – abuse is abuse is abuse. So when we see it happening, we should not remain silent. And this is what this post is about – passive aggressive abuse and calling it out.

When a mature, mindful adult poses a question on their social media profile inviting opinions, they are prepared for a wealth of responses that may not jive with their own belief system. In fact, if this person invites such a dialog, they are likely looking for others input so that they can critically analyze and have an informed debate or discussion. An interesting thing happens when these Mean Adults (M.A.s) come to play, however. They don’t try to engage in discussion; they just get nasty.

I don’t mean to confuse M.A.s with trolls; trolls generally aren’t people you know. M.A.s are people you do know who simply cannot have their belief systems questioned – not even when you aren’t speaking to them directly. Questions as simple as “Why do people who like X support Y?” will be responded with personal attacks like “You hate Y because you are naive!” when no one ever said anything about hating Y in the first place. When the M.A. is softly corrected by way of explanation, they get meaner with gems like “Oh of course you hate Y because your family uses subsidized Z.” 

Pretty soon, full out battles ensue as the M.A. enlists reinforcement to attack everyone and anyone who attempts to support the person who posed the original question. No amount of decency or logic will deter the M.A.s from their goal of diverting the topic away from the original topic because to them, anything that questions their belief system is an all-out assault and worthy of warfare. They will chomp with venom using euphemisms and bestow armchair psychological diagnoses on those who would defend their friend. They will use common abuse tactics such as playing the victim, vilifying the victim, and projecting blame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation

Make no mistake: You cannot win a battle with an M.A., but you can call them out for their behavior. I am a firm believer that we should always do so. Calling people names, labeling them as psychotic is abusive (and stigmatizing to those with real psychological disorders) and shouldn’t be tolerated. Until we start to hold others accountable for their behavior, the Mean Adults will continue to lash out and hurt others. And sometimes, that can end very badly for their victims. I, for one, am not going to be silent anymore.

Differently-Abled?

Yesterday I picked up a new pair of progressive bifocals with photochromic lenses. I am diagnosed with myopia, presbyopia, and photophobia – ocular disorders. I guess you could say that I have special needs or that I am differently-abled. You might even say I have a disAbility (with an emphasis on that A because you say I shouldn't let these things define me). Either way, without accommodations, I am severely disabled in our society and thus have a disability.

Myopia can sometimes be cured with surgery but only for some. Photophobia can only be reversed if it is caused by a secondary curable ailment but often this is not the case. Presbyopia has no cure. The only solution for most is to use accommodations which is how my case is approached. Many people today with the same type of disorders must use expensive accommodations to survive in society. 

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are more than 3 million US cases per year of presbyopia and myopia, each. According to the NIH, photophobia is common among many different populations including migraine sufferers, people with dry eyes, anxiety disorders, people who take different prescription drugs, and many more common diagnoses.

Do you feel pity for us?

So what are these strange sounding disorders anyway? They are some of the most common ailments on the planet: nearsightedness, age-related farsightedness, and light sensitivity. These are the reasons people wear eyeglasses and sunglasses.

How is your pity-meter now?

Common eye disorders have become so prevalent in society that we accept them now as a normal part of the human experience. We accept them. And when we accept something as part of the normal human experience, we simply accommodate it without so much as a blink (pun intended).

Make no mistake about it – these are disabilities. Without eyeglasses, people with even mild myopia cannot see well enough to drive or to be safe in any situation that requires visual acuity. Presbyopia eliminates the ability to read anything but extremely large print without magnification (reading glasses). Without sunglasses, people with light sensitivity cannot venture out into the daylight even on cloudy days. Without accommodations, people with these disorders cannot function in our society. This is the very essence of disability.

Do you believe wearing common eyeglasses deserves the title “special needs,” “differently-abled,” or a misshapen form of the word “disAbility?” I simply doubt it. And so neither do people with other disabilities deserve to have these labels imparted upon them.

The truth of the matter is, the only difference between wearing eyeglasses and the other things we currently call disabilities is acceptance.

It is time to stop drawing that line and accept that disability is just a part of the human experience. 

Enough Really Is Enough but Will You Listen?

I am all for stopping gun violence - all violence, really. But what will your Universal Background checks actually do to prevent gun violence? What are you screening for?

Past violent criminal history (such as domestic violence)?

This is fine, but isn't it a bit late for us to be doing something? Doesn't this infer the person has already been violent, perhaps with a gun? I suppose it's better than nothing. Cannot we do better than wait for the first infraction?

Someone's likelihood to become violent?

We currently cannot screen people based on their likelihood to become violent. It's not possible and it's not ethical. And what criteria would you even use?

How about someone's use of a legal drug - alcohol?

This is one of the few areas where there is research to support that a person may become violent. I'm pretty sure most of the United States would balk at this option.

So I suppose you are going down the mental illness path, aren't you? I am so tired of this conversation. I feel like a broken record.

"Epidemiologic studies show that the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent" (Swanson et al, 2014).

People who commit these terrible shootings are not doing so because of a mental health diagnosis any more than they are doing so because they are human. I see the media armchair diagnosing because of stigma. I see Facebook friends use words like "sick" and "crazy" and "psychopath" to describe these villains. But these anecdotes don't make it true. And I'm tired of arguing and trying to educate you. All you are doing is demonizing people who are already struggling in the society you have made nearly impossible for them to survive.

• You are creating stigma and witch hunts for people who have real medical issues. 
• You are demonizing people who have insurmountable challenges - disabilities- which you have created for them by making society inaccessible and now dangerous to their well-being.
• You are blaming the disabled for the monsters that have been created by hate and political bigotry.
• You are blaming the less powerful for the demons that you have summoned by your indifference to violence as a means to settle scores between enemies. 
• You are the problem - not those with mental health issues.

Go screen that. 

And while your at it, get rid of your killing machines to which you so desperately cling to protect yourself from the villains that you have created.

I've had enough rhetoric.

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Mental illness and reduction of gun violence and suicide: bringing epidemiologic research to policy
Swanson, Jeffrey W. et al.
Annals of Epidemiology , Volume 25 , Issue 5 , 366 - 376

Parenting is Hard

Things that make parenting an autistic child hard:

1. Professionals who refer your child to harmful therapies and services when you don’t know any better.
• Therapies such as ABA have been known to cause serious problems including trauma in the autistic population.
• https://sociallyanxiousadvocate.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/why-i-left-aba/
• https://autismwomensnetwork.org/my-thoughts-on-aba/
• http://unstrangemind.com/aba/
2. Professionals who shame you and your child due to their inability to perform the tasks the professionals predetermined are important, even when they are not.
• Telling you that your child needs more socialization – what if I told you that your child’s socialization will work itself out? That they do social differently? Do we socialize our neurotypical children? No, we do not. And thus this is just another “your child is acting not like the others so fix them” tactic.
• Telling you that your child must “use their words.” This is unnecessary. Children can be taught to communicate with technology and other means. Forcing language via spoken word is abuse when a child is not ready to do this yet. Autistic neurological wiring is different.
• Telling you that your child must make eye contact. This is flat out BS. More so it’s just a cultural preference. There is no need for it. It is painful for autistic people. Do not let them force your child in this way anymore than you would let them force your child into bending over backwards, literally.
3. Schools that refuse to accommodate your child’s differences or recognize your child’s strengths.
• This might be the #1 reason most families struggle – the schools systems who routinely abuse autistic children because they do not accommodate or even recognize needs. They punish and force children into terrible predicaments that are almost always detrimental to their well being.
4. Communities that refuse to include your child unless they can pass for “not disabled.”
• How many times have you neglected to go to that movie because it’s too loud and there are no other options?
• How many times have you been left off the birthday invite list because of ignorance?
• How many times have you been given looks six ways 'til Sunday because of ignorance?
5. All of the terrible misinformation that lives on the internet about autism and its causes.
• From deadly miracle cures to fraudulent causes, the snake oil salespeople are out to take your money and your soul along with it.
6. Organizations that profit from fear campaigns that exploit your child’s struggles due to all the above.
• Autism$peaks is among one of the biggest problems that autistic people face. Several other large organizations are not far behind.
• The adult autism population all but goes into hiding April 1 every year because it is the month where Awareness campaigns come out to label them as broken.

All of these things are due to others who exploit the disabled or refuse to educate themselves about autism. None of these things are due to autism. None of these things are due to your child. Keep the blame where it belongs.