Once again THANK YOU for your replies to this thread!!!
Here is an excerpt from the first email I sent Dr. Hirsh.
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My story.For a period of several months I was inhaling polyvinyl chloride fumes, talc dust, and mold.
This led to airway constriction, lung stiffness, burning lung pain (sometimes of nightmarish proportions), throbbing lung pain, and a “dead” feeling in the lungs. During the time period I was exposed to the stuff the symptoms started out slight, then gradually got worse and worse.
And no, I’ve never smoked.
I went to a conventional doctor. But he blew me off as a hypochondriac. “Your lung function test came back low normal, so this is very minor, nothing to worry about”, he insisted.
I knew better. I had read on the internet about lung conditions in freedivers. Our increased lung volume compensates for any lung damage, rendering lung function tests useless. It’s like putting a professional body builder on a scale, then calling them obese.
He put me on medicated inhalers. At first they reduced (not eliminated) my symptoms. But eventually they started to do the exact opposite, making the pain/constriction worse every time I used them! Finally I said “to hell with this”, and stopped taking them.
When I told my doctor that I had discontinued the medications, he said, “No problem”. I asked what else could be done, and he said, “The 2 month period is over. You have no lung problems, you are completely recovered at this point!”
No, I was not completely recovered. I was
still having lung pain and airway constriction.
Finally I picked up a bottle of tea tree oil at the health food store, poured it into a bowl, and held it up to my face to inhale the vapor. It killed the pain and constriction dead!
Excited by this effect, I started sniffing it regularly, in addition to leaving the bowls lying around so that the air in my apartment would be full of it.
Big mistake.
Now my place smelled like a crack lab. Whenever I walked in the door my head and lungs would hurt. When I left the apartment that went away. Spending time in there gave me a dramatic “brain drain” effect.
I read on the internet that natural oils cause plastics to break down. Then I realized: the tea tree vapor in the air had reacted with the carpeting, accelerating its offgassing process.
(This stuff is very powerful. I used it to dissolve a plastic cup.)
I confined my vaping to outdoors only, and ventilated the place out. But it was too late, that stinky gas kept emanating from the carpet for ages afterwards.
Then I discovered another problem: contaminants.
I bought a new brand of tea tree oil. This one made my lungs very sick very quickly. (Only used it for a few minutes, and the pain/constriction was exacerbated for about a week.) My friend identified the creepy smell: solvents.
(Ha, I wouldn’t know what solvents smell like. In chemistry class I had chronic sinusitis.)
Another brand didn’t have the same disgusting effect as the solvent one, but it did make me cough. I picked it up and looked at it: not organic.
Now I stick to the Herb Pharm brand.
In addition to inhaling the tea tree oil, I got an Olbas natural inhaler. (Ingredients: menthol, peppermint oil, cajeput oil, and eucalyptol oil) The directions say to inhale through the nose (it’s marketed for sinus problems), but I sucked on it directly like a cigarette.
I frequently returned to my perch on the balcony to use both the tea tree oil and the Olbas inhaler. (I ended up favoring the inhaler most of the time; I can’t exactly read a book or use the computer while sticking my face in a bowl.)
And now…
No more lung pain.
No more airway constriction.
No more “stiff” feeling in the lungs.
In fact, if I do it often enough, my lungs become ridiculously flexible. (Even more so than when I was a young child. It seems that the lung aging process can be significantly reversed.)
I still have polyvinyl chloride poisoning. But at least I am keeping the lung disease symptoms from rearing their ugly head.
When I tell people that thanks to inhaling plant oils my lung problems are no more, they ask, “Are you sure that is safe? You really don’t know what that junk is doing to your lungs.” But I personally am not worried. Animals that live in the forest are exposed to large amounts of plant oil vapor, yet they don’t all have lung disease. I think that evolution knows what she is doing.
More disturbing is the fact that these people think that lung disease can be cured by inhaling DRUGS. Sure, synthetic substances will mask the symptoms temporarily. But in the long run they exacerbate the very disease they are intended to treat! Is it worth it?
History.Using plant inhalation for lung healing is nothing new.
The Maori tribe cures bronchitis by sniffing bowls of manuka oil.
Shamans use mullein cigarettes to stop asthma attacks and improve breath hold times. Obviously the long-term damage from the combustion makes the short-term benefits from the plants a moot point. But it does suggest that inhaling certain plants has healing properties.
Some herbalists recommend that former tobacco smokers use mullein in a cannabis-style vaporizer to “clean the accumulated gunk out”. (My friend did this and said it was an unpleasant process; he coughed up a lot of black phlegm.)
Aromatherapists recommend eucalyptus oil to improve the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen.
And of course we have the medical cannabis advocates, touting the anti-asthma and anti-lung-cancer properties of their controversial substance.