Catholic. Nurse. Prolife. Married. A sinner. I love Fairy Tales (especially beauty and the beast), Disney, books. INFP, melecholic, hufflepuff. I swear I'm friendly, I'm just also painfully shy.
Oh my god, food extract is not the same as an essential oil.
Food extract is the flavoring of something cooked down into a carrier oil or alcohol that is safe for human ingestion.
Essential oil is the pure extract of the plant refined down and distilled for concentrated medicinal purposes to a significantly higher strength than simply adding ground up mint leaves to your water. The two are not comparable in any way.
Cinnamon extract and cinnamon essential oil are not the same thing.
One is about 100 times the strength of the other and can also cause acute organ failure. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the food extract.
Sweet gods I’m not trying to be mean, I want you to be aware and safe and stop putting yourselves and others at risk. Please.
Like maybe my tone is hard to read, maybe it just comes off as really angry but it’s not, it’s fear and worry. I read posts and clutch my head in alarm going “no! No! That’s how people die!” And then I get exasperated because a bunch of people not formally qualified chime in with “um actually this is a lie” and it’s not, it’s really, really not.
I’m not some big pharma advocate. I’m a crunchy witch hippy just like you with salt rock lamps and rose quartz all over my house. I just happen to have spent the last 15 years of my life studying the actual science of holistic medicines and I’m trying to help you not get hurt (or worse) becuase you trusted a sales person with no idea what the ever loving hell they were talking about beyond a sales pitch designed to maximize profit. Gah.
I see this so often in the Mommy world. There was a lady not long ago in one of the mom groups who was really worried about her toddler. He’d had a persistent cough for weeks and the doctor couldn’t figure out why. Someone asked, well what have to tried to treat it with, so far? She said she was using a humidifier, honey, and eucalyptus EO in the shower every night.
Yeah.
In case you were wondering, eucalyptus can cause respiratory distress in young children.
Sadly I don’t wonder. I have a friend whose daughter died from a home made menthol oil chest rub. She wasn’t even ten yet, but her mom– a qualified aromatherapist– thought she’d be old enough to handle it. She went into respitory distress and died seizing in her mother’s arms on route to the hospital. It was one of the most harrowing stories I had to listen to during my holistic training. She stood up there, on this podium next to a bunch of ponzy scheme essential oil sellers who looked like they wanted the floor to swallow them, and said “I killed my child with good intentions”.
I’ll never forget the look on her face.
So to reiterate, children under the age of ten should not be directly exposed to things like eucalyptus oil, peppermint or wintergreen. If you are using such things in your house and your child starts to complain of headaches, lethargy and general “feel worse”, don’t just assume it’s the cold/flu. Those are all signs of menthol sensitivity and they only get worse with increased exposure. Ventilate the room, take them outside if you can until the air clears. Do not apply again.
Rapid onset wheezing may be a sign of allergic reaction or possible asthma attack triggered by the menthol too. If they tell you their chest is warm or fuzzy when you use it, that’s another sign it’s not going down well with them. Again, ventilate the area or remove anything you applied to them. Administer inhalers if necessary. Watch for any more labored breathing or if they suddenly go limp or you can’t wake them up. If they do call 911.
This can also apply to people with allergies and asthma who are otherwise healthy.
One of the safest, natural ways to alleviate congestion is with just pure good old fashioned warm steam. Keep the air moist, drink plenty of warm fluids. Menthol can help relieve the feeling of congestion, but there’s limited evidence to suggest it actually clears the airways. And for the love of god don’t inhale mustard or horseradish (I’ve seen that suggestion on posts too, though how you’d get those oils I don’t know). That’s literally what tear gas is made of.
I apologize sincerely for bringing this long post back into your lives, fam, but I’m getting inundated with questions about what can the possible harm be if you dab a little neat peppermint oil on your child’s skin to help them with a little head cold, and this is the most succinct way I can put it.
The harm you may do, is in fact death. I am not telling you these things to be a kill joy, I’m telling you so you won’t accidentally kill yours.
Re-blogging here since I know a lot of people apply EOs to dogs too and menthol/eucalyptus and the like are toxic for dogs as well. Same with tea tree oil which I see recommended as tick prevention way too often.
a person has XXY chromosomes. they have two X chromosomes. they have a Y chromosome. are they male, female, or neither?
Klinefelter’s only affects male. So that person would be male with a genetic condition. @inferior-mirage has brilliant comments on intersex conditions as she’s intersex herself.
But, for future reference; the Y chromosome (or rather, the SRY gene on it)essentially defines your sex. That’s why people with CAIS (genotypical males, phenotypical women) also look & are raised like women but have neither ovaries nor a uterus, i.e. are infertile.
Let’s take a deeper look at this male-specific chromosomal abnormality and remind ourselves why intersex advocacy groups such as ISNA or OII do not recognize our disorders as evidence for a third gender or sex:
Should these disordered males be thought of as not-males? Only if you ignore the medical issues caused by our ~biological nonbinaryness~ to present our variations as naturally intended
Does 47,XXY affect children and their development?
No one can predict for certain what effect the extra chromosome will have on an individual. Personalities in this group are as varied as in the general population. In addition, the spectrum of manifestations is wide. However, the following characteristics are said to occur more often in children with 47,XXY. Keep in mind that a child may have only one or two features, while others may have more:
delayed speech; gross and fine motor delays; sensory integration difficulties, which may include sensitivity to things like sounds, touch, or movement; mild hypotonia or low muscle tone; ADHD; auditory processing problems; language-based learning disabilities, including reading and written language difficulties; social skill deficits; anxiety; depression
Does 47,XXY affect one’s health?
XXY’s have an increased risk for: autoimmune disorders, including diabetes and thyroiditis; hypothyroidism; breast cancer; osteoporosis; leg ulcers; depression; dental problems
Would these disordered males have been male socialized?
When is one diagnosed?
Diagnosis can occur at any time in a person’s life. XXY newborns look like any other newborn. Unless the infant was tested prenatally, it is unlikely that anyone would suspect this condition. The characteristics of 47,XXY are often subtle, so many XXY’s go undiagnosed for years. Diagnosis is most likely to be made:
as the result of prenatal testing; during childhood when developmental delays in areas like speech and language are present; at puberty when a boy’s secondary sexual characteristics are not progressing in a typical way; during fertility studies, when a couple has been unsuccessful in conceiving a child and in some instances; if continuing physical or psychological difficulties are present
time and time again we continue to state that the sry gene (almost always on the y chromosome) is what makes you male, therefore xxx and xo people are still female, and that intersex people are variations in either male or female, and not a brand new sex, and that intersex people don’t want to be pawns in your fucked up arguments, and transactivists keep coming at us with “HEY TERFS WHAT IF [some intersex condition]”
like please stop being willfully obtuse and acting like you don’t know what a male and female is, like there’s a type of gamete other than sperm or egg, and like intersex people are just “gotcha” points in your misogynistic, backwards, agenda
