Sunday, January 16, 2011

Steam clean your bath room!

Ok this is really simple. Take a nice hot long shower and when you get out take a rag and wipe down your bathroom. You can also use some nice smelling essential oils like lavender, peppermint ect.... diluted so it doesnt harm the paint. Throw a rag over a mop head to reach to the top of the walls. Make sure to get the outside of the toilet and bathtub.
The steam will loosen up the grime and make it so much easier to clean.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Straw itch mite or scabies?

Now I dont claim to be a skin expert, although I make some skin care products such as body butters, bath teas, and cocoa butter bath melts and soaps. I do know when something is not right!
I have a problem with smokers’ patches. They work and I don’t want a cigarette but they irritate my skin so bad that I can’t wear them long enough to ever stop smoking.
The start of October I decided to try again with the intention of using them no matter how much they made my skin itch. I was using them mainly on my arms as they irritate my back worse than my arms. About the middle of oct I had a spot on my back that just itched like the blazes and wouldn’t go away. So once again I stopped the patches.
Now I must tell you that around that time I had been pulling 100 ft briars out of the trees on my property where there is also poison ivy and I have chickens and a garden that both needed straw. On top of that I feed the birds regularly, so I could have gotten these critters from any of these places.
Now back to the patch on my back. I stopped the patch and this little itchy spot kept creeping, spreading to cover more and more of my back.
So I’m thinking briars that I got poked with or poison ivy. It had now grown to be a patch about the size of my palm and an itch from hell. Because it was growing it led me to believe that it was poison something as I am not allergic to anything and I had never had poison ivy so I sprayed it with alcohol thinking it would dry it up but all it did was dry my skin out.
My husband is so sweet he gives me back rubs now and then and after a back rub it spread to encompass more of my back. It had also moved to my left elbow and a day or two after that to my right wrist then to my right elbow and slowly up my arms.
In the mean time after scouring the web and learning more about contact dermatitis and the possibility of bugs I used straight peppermint oil on my back and arms which I DO NOT RECOMMEND and I don’t recommend any more than a few drops in your bath water EVER. This may have actually done a little good but not sure. After the peppermint a few days later I tried tea tree oil and that may have helped also. The reason I say it may have helped is I was still itching and I didn’t know until 2 and ½ months of having this that you will still itch like crazy for 2-4 weeks after you have killed these little buggers. Now after the tea tree oil I still didn’t know it was bugs. I used a steroid pack that my husband had after scouring the web and collecting information on it. First day 6 pills I woke up and my back felt like it had cleared quite a bit. That night I got another back rub. Now my husband rubs from the base of my back up to my shoulders and across my upper arms, that is his MO. The steroid pack is a 6 day pack and at the end of the 6 days my legs were itching very bad and you bet I was scratching. This is the kind of itch where you want to get a wire brush and just rip your skin to shreds. (Yes it is that bad)
Now with a steroid pack come the ability for your skin to bruise very easy and after scratching my legs with my jeans on I noticed when I took them off that I had BLACK bruises, GIANT I might add, the size of the palm of my hand right where I had been scratching.
It just so happened that I had to make a doctors appointment for my thyroid meds and showed it to my doctor who wanted to send me to a dermatologist at $60.00 a shot after I have to pay her $30.00 (OH HELL NO) I cant afford it so she prescribed permethrin cream which is a topical insecticide. By the time I got home from the doctor I noticed that the stuff had spread all up my back, my shoulders and around my neck but had stopped right at my hair line. Remember that last back rub? As Oprah says that was an ahhh haaa moment! I never thought they were scabies as the only person I have come in contact with was my husband and he was not afflicted with them. Also I had been sleeping in the living room by the fire cause he snores loud enough to wake the neighborhood so he wasn’t getting them from me, as they are contagious. So the last place they were hiding now was my upper back and neck and not as bad everywhere else but I was still covered in them and I was still itching everywhere.
You can only keep this cream on for 8-10 hours so I waited till I was going to bed and had him do my back and OMG the only way to explain how that felt was to say, I have been attacked by fire ants everywhere! After a few minutes it subsided and I took benadryl so I could sleep and washed it off the next morning. Took all my sheets, pillowcases and blankets and washed them AGAIN in hot water. Sprayed the futon with some high-powered bug stuff having to be careful with the cat, as this stuff will kill a cat.
About a week after I used the cream I did use some more on my neck and chest and bra line as I felt firmly that I didn’t do a good enough job the first time. It will still itch like crazy for 2-4 weeks after you use it as the mites are dieing off. Personally I think you just piss them off so bad that they are in there digging at you and laughing, yea that’s it, they are laughing at you!
It has been 14 days now since I used the cream and I had a long bath this morning that I loaded down with DEAD Sea salts colloidal oatmeal and a dropper full of tea tree oil. After which I used olive oil on my skin and I can tell you that I feel better than I have in weeks.
This has been a hard road and I never want to experience it again. My husband has gotten to the point where when I start scratching he starts making fun of me by scratching too and I never know if he is joking or serious. I pray to god he doesn’t have to experience what he is has found as a way to make fun of me.
A look back at what I tried and because of the time it takes to actually stop itching I don’t know if any of these things may have worked alone or if it was the cream alone.
I must tell you that each female carries eggs and hatch out approximately 300 full grown adults which in turn do the same thing, so it is very important to find something that works quickly.
I did the peppermint oil, the tea tree oil which either are recommended but like I said before don’t do the peppermint straight, tea tree oil is ok straight. I went to earthclinic.com where I did a borax and peroxide bath, well I showered and then put the mixture on. It worked for the dog a while back and that may have worked. I just really wanted a natural cure but, as it takes so long for the itch to go away I can’t say if any of the previous worked or not. I guess what it comes down to is to not wait. It was the waiting and thinking it was poison ivy or stress or dermatitis that gave the little buggers time to make their way all over my body and I guess you don’t know until you know.
I do know I didn’t get it from the animals, as they were not scratching. I have decided that they were straw itch mites, which is in the same family as scabies. After looking at pictures of infected skin and learning that they don’t like hair, which is where they stopped that is the only conclusion I can come up with.
A friend told me that there is a lotion called kwell lotion that is basically the same as the permethrin and may or may not save you money.
If you know me then you know I don’t like pharmaceuticals and I don’t like pesticides. I think that both are just a way for someone else to get rich off of our own ignorance. I don’t believe it when they say that certain herbs have not been studied because that would constitute ignorance on their part and like I have said before, drugs have to be made of something that is already on this earth. Pharmaceutical companies will take something simple heat it up and then give it a different name that we don’t understand!
Just try to keep it simple and stay away from the junk offered to us and if you have an itch that wont go away and continues to grow, get it checked out. It could just be bugs but it could also be cancer. Our skin is our largest organ of our body, so take care of it! Our outsides love olive oil as much as our insides and a good bath with a teaspoon of olive oil as well as using it as a moisturizer can never hurt. Take care of you and till next time! Namaste!