Smells, be they perfume or odors, and smoke, is an experience that your nervous system, already on edge and overstimulated from the migraine condition, may perceive as an unwelcome stimulant. If your sense of smell is overly sensitive, anything that causes it to react will be unwelcome, good or bad.
What causes a smell to be a smell? It is a combination of minute particles that reach our olfactory nerve endings inside the nasal cavity. So if you think of a smell as something physical that you can eliminate for the sensation to disappear – you are on the right track.
When I was in the grips of the migraine condition, any kind of smell was too strong, too concentrated, too intense… Am I still overly sensitive to smells compared to when I was still suffering from migraines? Not at all. Wearing perfume every day is a pleasure, and many of the variety of plants, flowers, bushes, and trees on my property all have perfumes – by design. A pleasant perfume wafts in with every breeze.
My system no longer overreacts to what my nose perceives because I have managed to raise my pain threshold and worked on calming my nervous system with so many different practices and habits – which you are reading about in my series of columns. It’s all interconnected.
If smells trigger you, walk through your environment, indoors and out, from one area to another. What items with any kind of smell can be eliminated or replaced with something less detectable, stimulating, or offensive to your nose?
As consumers, we are lucky to be surrounded by a wealth of choices in the marketplace to accommodate our every need. Invest in a good air freshener system – either central or portable. Consider an air freshener apparatus in every room if smells are a strong trigger. You will be surprised how much odor was in that area before you installed such a system.
Let’s start with the room where you spend most of your time: the bedroom.
- Begin by making sure it is spotless and dry: the walls, ceiling, and floor must be in good repair and covered with paint and varnishes with low-emission paints or stains. Be sure there is no mold anywhere. Mold not only has an unpleasant smell, but it is very unhealthy even for non-migraine sufferers.
- Get rid of any dust. Dust has an unpleasant smell, and it probably contains tiny insects – mites – that none of us need to breathe in.
- Change your bedding often – we shed lots of skin cells every day, and again, you don’t want to inhale any of those, nor the mites they attract from your pillow.
- One way to find out if anything has a smell that could be eliminated is to press it to your nose and inhale deeply. If there is a sharp sensation in your nose – that means there’s probably a source of smell that could be replaced with a natural fiber, preferably from a company or artisan who can claim allergy-free products. I find that synthetic fibers or fabrics often leave a stinging sensation in my nose. Give preference to fabrics that are advertised as hypoallergenic.
- I would even replace a wall-to-wall carpet with area rugs that can be tossed into the washer more often. Instead of vacuuming a wall-to-wall carpet, I would prefer less noise and replace vacuuming with wiping the floor with a damp mop – if you add just a capful of bleach to the bucket of hot water, the bleach will disinfect without smelling too much for too long.
- Besides curtains, have sheers in front of windows because sheers will catch most of the dust and can be washed often.
Part two, next week!
