by Julie Genser
As anyone with a serious chronic illness knows, one’s bed is an important place for deep healing to occur. When challenged with severe chemical sensitivities, bed frames, mattresses, sheets and bedding can become huge obstacles between you and a night of stress-free, rejuvenative sleep.
Bedding has been a particularly difficult mystery to solve for myself since I became severely MCS in 2004. For much of the past five years, I have slept on cold, hard wood or tile floors with minimal (and now, no) bedding except for a pillow, and usually without a source of heat except, if I’m lucky, a small hot water bottle. I cannot tolerate organic cotton, wool, silk, synthetics, and almost any type of material on my body; this includes clothing as well. In the past I have sometimes done okay with regular cotton items that have been well offgassed, but this is rare. The problem is potentially life threatening, as I am poorly equipped for low temperatures and am concerned about the impending winter and near-zero degrees it will bring.
For this reason, I wanted to survey the MCS community to see how others had creatively solved this problem. I hope this small collection of inspired solutions will give you hope and direction, as it has me…read the full article
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Earthwalker is the username that PT founder Julie Genser created for her online interactions so many years ago when first creating Planet Thrive.
Julie's (Earthwalker's) life was derailed over twenty years ago when she had a very large organic mercury exposure after she naively used a mouth thermometer to measure the temperature of just-boiled milk while making her very first pizza at home. The mercury instantly expanded into a gas form and exploded out the back of the thermometer right into her face. Unaware that mercury was the third most neurotoxic element on Earth, Julie had no idea she had just received a very high dose of a poisonous substance.
A series of subsequent toxic exposures over the next few years -- to smoke from two fires (including 9/11), toxic mold, lyme disease, and chemical injuries -- caused catastrophic damage to her health. While figuring out how to survive day-to-day, and often minute-to-minute, she created Planet Thrive to help others avoid some of the misdiagnoses and struggles she had experienced.
She has clawed her way over many health mountains to get to where she is today. She is excited to bring the latest iteration of Planet Thrive to the chronic illness community.
In 2019, Julie published her very first cookbook e-book called Low Lectin Lunches (+ Dinners, Too!) after discovering how a low lectin, gluten free diet was helping manage her chronic fascia/muscle pain.
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