Asthma, Allergies, and Bad Foods - Our Trip Home

We were privileged to go see family in Arizona the last couple of weeks and teach some classes about the doTERRA essential oils. It was fantastic. For ten days we saw family and friends and helped everyone we could with their health issues. Then we made the trip back.

Between Tucson and Phoenix Sadie started coughing again. It wasn't as bad as her Croup fit from before, but it was bad. Steph's sister happened to be in the car and was able to recognize something that we hadn't clued in on yet - Sadie (our middle child) has asthma.

During the stay in Tucson Sadie had gotten red eyed and puffy like she was having an allergy fit. It turned out she was reacting to dog hair. One night it was from the hair in the house and another night from some rather large dogs she'd ran into earlier at another home. We diffused Lavender and Melaleuca into the air during the nights to ease the suffering, but the episode with the large dogs left her much worse than the previous ones.

While on the I-10 freeway she broke into that nearly croup-like cough and thankfully Steph's sister recognized the sound of the cough since a friend's kid had just been diagnosed with asthma. I've been suffering with asthma since I was about Sadie's age and suddenly the pieces fit together - why she is always coughing more than the others and why she got the croup and no one else did. She has the same allergy and illness induced asthma I have (UPDATE: See Asthma, Like Her Old Man).

So we pulled over to a rest stop and set up our diffuser in the car. We had a cigarette lighter adapter and shoved the diffuser in a side-storage compartment. Steph filled it with Breathe and we ran it the rest of that part of the trip. I also did a Marjoram and Fractionated Coconut Oil back rub before we took off again. She was breathing much better when we got to our stop for the next two days. But our troubles didn't end there.

Dividing our journey into two legs made it easier, but our food supplies were exhausted half way through - so our eating habits had gone fairly poor before the last leg home. We bought some junk food at a grocery store in Flagstaff and ate it despite it not tasting as good as it used to (apparently our taste buds have adapted too). Worst of all, we were tired and a little out of it, which led to one of the worst decisions we've made in a while - fast food.

I'm hoping I don't need to expound on the harmful nature of that stuff. Let's just say that having adapted our bodies to better and better eating as of late, our bodies were more willing to "tell us off" for the endeavor. We got home late and put everyone in bed. I started a soaked grain bread batch (our first in days) and joined them. The next day sucked.

from sonomaasthma.org

In the morning the baby pooped all over me and I shouted out to Steph "What did we feed her last night?!" To which I received the response "Nutter Butters...oh and French Fries". Yeah, things were going great.

The kids were ill and Steph felt horrible. She actually experienced all the symptoms of an allergic asthma attack that afternoon. For new-comers to the feeling, imagine a painful compressing pressure just below the sternum and an inability to draw a full or even meaningful breath. Steph had experienced this pain before, but not the shortness of breath. Since we had just found out about our kid she asked if it was the same symptoms as asthma. Yep.

Nikki's earlier post about the RTNCs in our food proves true more and more. We have been able to keep down the symptoms in everyone, but it is clear they are all suffering from a cold and allergies brought on by what we ate. Chemicals in our foods do so much more to our bodies than we are willing to admit as a society. Just because we eat them all the time and have become accustomed to them doesn't mean they are okay. Take a brake from them for a while and you'll see just how bad they are for you. We can see it.

My asthma directly correlates to my food and illness rates. Strangely, sleep affects my ability to get sick much less than what I eat. Those pesky chemicals practically floor me every time. We're done with bad food. Every thing we eat will be much better planned out from now on.