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