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recent

• Where am I headed?
• Eye boogers
• Geranium robertianum
• Please don't make me go back
• Deceptive weather
• Swedes in the streets
• running out
• One less

I have a theory. After blowing my nose one hundred times tonight, not because it is dripping or running, but just for the luxury of being able to breath through it for one fleeting breath before it stuffs back up, I have decided that the reason it is stuffing up is to prevent me from inhaling more of the terrible pollen swarming around the farm here.

For the past month the only times I have been able to breath through my nose are those that I am either on the water or in the city. At one point a while back, it was so bad that I could not even open my eyes long enough to see what the botanist, conducting a tour of the nature reserve I am living at, was talking about. That little field trip almost killed me.

To make it worse (or maybe better depending on how you look at it) I had a helluva cold last week. Usually a cold for me just means a runny nose. I have seen on TV sitcoms where people have a cold and are laying in bed. I thought it was just a part of the joke. I have had co-workers call in sick to work because they have a cold. I thought they were just wusses or lazy. I have never had a cold that caused me to miss any of my daily activities (other than breathing through my nose). This cold kicked my butt though. It was wonderful to feel such extreme misery, knowing of course that it would be over in a day (I am a fast healer).

So, my point was... combined with the hay fever, the most evilest cold I have ever had almost killed me. But I survived.

I still have the hay fever, and I have been resisting taking some manufactured medicine containing crap no one really understands. Sure it would help me to feel better now, but in the long run it would do little other than make me reliant on some expensive chemicals for the rest of my life.

Not that there are any alternatives. I went into the eco-butik (the organic goods shop here) and asked for some herbal medicine that would cure it. Henrick (the owner and my landlord) showed me some supplements that would make me more "in-balance" and make me stronger so that next year when spring rolls around I wont suffer as much. Of course, for that to work, I also have to change my diet.

At first this sounds unacceptable. But think about it. Here we are doing whatever we want, eating whatever chemicals we want to eat, breathing whatever toxins we want to breathe, always with the expectation that someone will make some drug that will fix any problems that arise from our unnatural behavior. These drugs in turn lead to some other problem that requires some other drugs. And the cycle goes on.

Is there something to changing our lifestyle to fit more with the natural systems of the earth? Is there a benefit to living within the constraints of the ecosystem (the key there being the word "system")? Is there a reason that allergies have increased between 50 and 70 percent in the last two decades? Could it have anything to do with our attitude of do whatever we want and fix it later?

I don't really know the answer. In fact the only thing I do know is that today when I went into town I resisted, once again, the almost insane urge to buy some drugs to fix problems that many have claimed to fix by simply changing their lifestyle. I don't know how much longer I will be able to resist though... I am taking the balancing vitamins. I am eating healthier than ever before (not for the allergies, but just because I eat at the eco-cafe every day). Still, I have not had one morning in three weeks where I can open my eyes without first picking off all the eye-boogers.

The photos are from a few days ago when I helped rescue a sail boat from an Island where it was shipwrecked. Wednesday I will join the owner (in the photo steering the boat) and my new housemate in a three day sailing tour of the the islands.

"Sure it would help me to feel better now, but in the long run it would do little other than make me reliant on some expensive chemicals for the rest of my life."

Kevin, I urge you to reconsider this thinking. Science has brought us many wonderful medicines, from antibiotics to aspirin, and antihistimines. Just because you're not familiar with antihisimines and how they work doesn't mean that they are not valuable.

The newest generation of allergy medicines, are really amazing. They often have very little in the way of side effects, and they let you live life the way you would had you not had allergies.

This spring was a very bad year for allergies in Japan. At first I resisted as well, but after two weeks of daily misery, I found an over-the-counter medicine that worked for me and overnight I was transformed back to my old self.

Perhaps it is because we do not live among nature, that we are mostly denizens of the concrete and asphalt jungle, that we are now sensitive to pollens that we would not have been had we been exposed to them since infancy.

I'm not totally against he medicines, but I think it makes more sense to look for an upstream sollution. I.e. living and eating healthier. If, having done that, the problem still persists, I would grudgingly take the medicine. It's so much of a tempation though to just throw caution to the wind right now, eat and drink whatever I think I want (instead of what my body wants) and then try to fix the problems downstream with some new drug. So I will stick it out a little longer (actually the past few days have not been as bad).

As for allergies increasing, I am not refering to only hay fever, but all alergies, to things such as milk and animals and fruits and plants... whatever you can think of. This indicates to me that it is not simply a matter of living in cities now as opposed to living on the farm and being used to the pollen. (that and the fact that the pollen in Tokyo is pretty bad even though it is a city, and the kids growing up there still have problems even though they grow up with it)

My stubborness might also be traced back to the fact that I have, traditionally, really never taken medicine for anyhting. Aspirin, cold medicine, hay fever, etc... I rarely take them because I was rarely given them as a kid I guess. Of course, my dad was an asprin-aholic for a while, so I don't think the no-medicine policy for us kids was anything to do with health reasons... probably more just to save money.

Anyway, I still rarely take anyhting, and I hate to start now.

I lived another miserable life in Tokyo this Spring, being questioned by co-workers why I don't take medicines which are proved by them for its effectiveness. Well, same as Kevin, I don't want to loose the sense that something with my body is "wrong" or trying to tell me some messages, which I want to take seriously. It is because I believe in usefulness of science, which showed us how complicated and genius our body mechanisms are, and that we know so little about it. That is why I don't conceal the signs I was receiving from my body with medicines unless I would die from inability to breath or be unable to meet my basic needs to survive. Interestingly enough though, Kevin is into "changing my way of diet" while he opposes my new organic diet program called Macro-biotics" whenever I talk about it... how come, Kevin???

Tomoe, you've said it much more clearly than I have. Maybe it's my inability to articulate what I want to say that has led you to mistakenly think that I am opposed to the Macro-biotic diet. Although fallowing some prescribed diet with a name attached to it sounds a little strange to me. I would much rather learn about it and the principles behind it, and incorporate those principles into other principles found in other ways of eating as well as what seems "right" to me.

Have you tried a salt-water nasal wash? http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw67090
My aunt, who used to get frequent nasal infections, finds nasal washing to be extremely helpful.

She has a little teapot made for this purpose (in case you were wondering how to get the saltwater up your nose).

Hope this helps. For my lesser allergy days, I try a bottle of root beer. Don't know why it helps me, but it does.

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