Allergic to Tap Additives

[MonDie]

I have been allergically responding to the tap water, and I think I have worked out the hydrodynamics of it well enough to post it with some certainty.  I don't know where my mom's apartment's water comes from.  Any help understanding this would be appreciated.

Main allergic response: The first thing I addressed was the tableware.  Yes, tableware and silverware washed in tap water is the #1 culprit if no action at all is taken.  My fingers were the number two culprit.  Even accidental contact with fingers was noticeably aggravating to my allergy.  Rinsing my fingers with store-bought water was ultimately more wasteful than simply using inside-out bags as gloves.

Indigestion: I have also had some big problems with my toothbrush since I began sequestering it.  This phenomenon was unique because it wasn't an allergic reaction, but it seems to happen consistently.  I think the toothpaste and maybe something else is reacting over night on the toothbrush, so I have to always always rinse my toothbrush before using it, ... lest I risk digestive issues.  Beware, these digestive issues are exacerbated by energy drinks - it happens an hour after whichever happens after the other, the energy drink or the toothbrushing.

Smaller allergic response: Other more negligible exposure points, negligible as they were, were illuminating.  Some wrappers allow hit or miss transmission, and the best solution is to bite the corners off before pulling the wrapper open.  It is possible that pouring over a horizontal surface splashed a negligible amount back into my water container, but I am not sure anymore because it was a wide-mouthed bottle, which has its own problems if my lips aren't rinsed.  In any case, if the surface isn't solid or isn't horizontal, it isn't an issue in any degree.

It also gets ingested from my lips in negligible amounts, presumably when certain circumstances convene.  For example, moustache hairs can be problematic in unpredictable ways.  I just learned that (with moustache hairs) I am able to ingest some via my pillowcase.  (I hadn't shaved, ) I poured about half an ounce of water over my lips, being sparing with my water, but instead of washing off my lips I washed down whatever was beside my lips after it leaped from my pillowcase to my face.  I will soon explain how this pertains to tableware.  Any effects of ingesting it from the lips are negligible, but the effect I just described seems to interact with what is eaten or drank.  Thick foods, like doughnuts and thick cookies, and plastic bottles, contrasted with cans, seem to allow it to pass into my mouth from my lips in negligible quantities.  It seems to rinse from my lips more easily than it rinses from fabrics.  When I rinsed my pillowcase contact point with insufficient water (maybe half an ounce of water), my lips became a noticeable exposure point.  The same thing had happened with my fabric facemask, but I poured out at least ten ounces of water over it.  Compared to my lips, It rinsed down the fabric at less than one-tenth the pace, requiring more than ten times the water.  I have not clearly recreated either effect more than once, but the implication is that tableware, despite being the worst unrinsed, is also the easiest to rinse.  Nothing to my memory contradicts this.  All of these were negligible exposure sources, and none caused the digestive problems that I had with my toothbrush + energy drinks.  Cans are better than bottles, but I don't like wasting the water rinsing the rim of the can because I didn't want to remove the can carefully.

Thanks.  I hope I don't have to edit this.

[studiot]

Advice in here might help.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1198665.Tired_or_Toxic_A_Blueprint_for_Health

🙂

 

[MonDie]

On 7/26/2021 at 5:48 AM, studiot said:

Advice in here might help.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1198665.Tired_or_Toxic_A_Blueprint_for_Health

🙂

 

I don't know why the book summary is missing.  I already have general biological knowledge and personally acquired medical knowledge.  Even at sub-sniffling doses I can feel restless and scatter-brained, but this effect oddly doesn't increase proportionally to the sniveling and on a few occasions has been quite intense in the absence of any sniffles.  I don't know whether to blame it on histamine.

Anyway, I have just confirmed that I am washing it from my cheek rather than washing it off from my lips.  I should probably partition my pouring technique into two different steps, so that my pouring doesn't just grab more from the periphery as it washes away.  I poured out more than a few ounces this time, and I still had issues.  On the prior night I tried putting plastic over my face, but I was touching the plastic as I was tearing the ear holes.  Working it out later, I realized that I had indirectly touched my cheek on the very periphery of where I would pour the water, and it was its location on the periphery that allowed it to act as a reservoir of sorts.  I still don't know what happened with the facemask.  The facemask was never an issue UNTIL I tried pouring water (and sweetened tea) over it, and was only an issue immediately after, not thereafter.  It probably tends toward an equilibrium with however much is on my lips whenever my lips are touching the mask.

Do I have to add a warning?  Do not put plastic over your face.  Especially, do not put plastic over your face overnight!  It wasn't even necessary.

... Because you could suffocate due to the non-breathable, non-porous nature of the material, i.e. the plastic.  I use plastic to keep things dry.  I was reluctant to put it over my face.

[MonDie]

---

Also, looking at the splash patterns in the sink, I'm wondering whether some sink splashing reaches my moustache region when I am rinsing my lips and not rinsing above my lips.  That could be why the moustache hairs are problematic.

But, per the above, I still remember what I ate: rod-shaped cookies first, and then bagels yesterday.  The bagels didn't touch my moustache region but only a wider area of my lips, after my lips were extensively rinsed, and the effect was unusually severe despite the extensive rinsing.  I don't know what is happening today, the day after, but something is going on, and I'm tentatively blaming the sink.

I'm carefully biting my crackers out of their bag after running out of bottled water, and I'm pulling out the ones that might have touched my lip.  I just had another flare up and it made me momentarily reconsider, but I'm pretty sure.

Another Addendum:  Two days ago I decided to snort the water into my nose until my nasal passages were clean.  I may have actually re-sensitized myself to the effects if it could have splashed from the sink to my nose, essentially refilling my nasal cavity with more of it so that I experience a more enduring sinusoidal effect.

[iNow]

Could it maybe be the drugs you’re taking, and not the tap water?

no offense intended… genuine question 

[MonDie]

*oops, sinusoidal is a math term

I am not on any drugs.  I took anti-psychotics for about a year about five years ago, but otherwise I hardly ever taken an Aspirin.

[iNow]

Interesting. Can you find a way to have the water chemically analyzed?

[Endy0816]

Maybe metal contamination? Might be worth looking at buying reverse osmosis system if bottled water doesn't cause issues.

[MonDie]

On 8/4/2021 at 3:51 AM, iNow said:

Interesting. Can you find a way to have the water chemically analyzed?

I don't know if I can conduct a test for it until I know what it is or at least how it is behaving, and the situation is becoming more complex as I collect more observations.

 

On 8/5/2021 at 4:44 AM, Endy0816 said:

Maybe metal contamination? Might be worth looking at buying reverse osmosis system if bottled water doesn't cause issues.

I will definitely check it out for resonant observations.  I also have my old chemistry textbook that I read the first half of.  Stopped before Lewis Structure.

---

I've been feeling agitated for the last five or six years, and I began thinking aloud after I quit the prescribed anti-psychotics.  The agitation--the restless scatterbrained thinking aloud--got noticeably worse after I started rinsing my face with water.  Something else, though, was causing the allergic response. 

Whatever was causing the agitation seemed to be remaining active for so long that it was sitting in wait on my pillowcase, where the contaminant would pass onto my cheeks where I would rinse it onto my mouth by pouring more water onto it.  In contrast, whatever caused the allergic response seems to be more soluble such that it rinses away more easily, but the allergy contaminant also has the ability to invade the aqueous solution on the wet tissues.  Recently, I've been wiping my mouth with wet tissues, but the wet tissues seem to pull in the contaminant from wherever they can: the surrounding face, or the edge of the plastic bag where the baggie opens.  Imagine somebody trying to spot mop a floor covered with a dried goop, a dried goop that becomes liquid again whenever it contacts the moisture of the water from the mop.  That dried/wet goop is the allergy-causing contaminant.  The full coverage of the residue over all the lips is a problem because you will eat or drink it multiple times: you eat the inside of your lips, then your toothbrush will replace it with contaminant from the lower lip or the lip's corners, then you eat it again.  I will say this tentatively, and I will revise it if I am wrong, but the best approach seems to be to let the external skin dry after wet wiping it externally and before wiping inside mouth.  You also have to open wide for the corners and wipe the inside corners carefully, so you don't draw in more from the surrounding skin.  I am not sure how long it takes to build up inside the lip's corners*.

Regarding the lip's corners. I seemed to be experiencing poor concentration related to the lip corners, poor concentration that wasn't noticeably until twice it manifested as physical fatigue combined with overwhelming inattention that was hard to ignore.  Get it?  Overwhelming inattention that you can't ignore?  Yeah, I need a method to asses it.  I am not sure how long it takes to build up yet, but I had literal mental and physical fatigue when I finally noticed it.  Anyway, it seems to peak after two hours or from one-hour to three-hour, and to last for a total of seven (7) hours.  Incidentally, the allergic thing usually sets in after ten minutes, but when I began wiping my lips, it started producing a more enduring allergic effect lasting from two-and-a-half hours until five hours or so, and this happened regardless of whether it was ingested from my hands or from my lips.  Talk about unnecessary confounds!  How am I supposed to assess my own ability to concentrate?  Anyway, the solution to these problems, tentatively, is to very carefully wipe inside the opened lips after allowing the external skin to dry after being wet wiped.  Otherwise, there is an alternative and pretty straightforward, albeit messy, method: pour the water onto your lips while lying down. -->

Pour the water onto your lips while lying down.  Clear water that won't stain.  Patiently pour gently from a small or low-filled bottle so you don't get it up your nose, or else it will be carrying something else with it.  And get the bottom of your lip too, or else the remaining contaminant will get spread around by your toothbrush.  In fact, a rectangular shaped section of skin surface is probably more optimal than a lip-shaped section.

Other discoveries:

Whatever is causing the diahrea, probably the stuff on my cheek, only has this degistive effect after being heated or being exposed to chemicals, including a disinfecting wipe and a sensitive skin wipe, but this chemical product also removes from the surface very, very.  That is, if you don't toothbrush your way into a round two.  The over-heated form might have an onset of less than an hour rather than more than an hour.

Plastic bags as gloves still cause problems if you have to reach into a deep container, because you still have to touch the edge of the bag to open it.  I will have to work this out somehow.

Regarding soda cans, open them carefully with a firm grip, and do not pour anything onto the can after opening it with your hand.

[MonDie]

I won't be able to finish because people are withholding all money from me, into starvation.  This much became clear:

Whether it starts on the lip's corner from sleeping on my side (it probably does), it inevitably migrates across the lips where it becomes stuck on the surface, or dare I say in the epithelium, but the lips are sticky.  You can remove it by getting the lips mildly wet (?: setting for between immediately and twenty/thirty minutes) and applying plenty, plenty of motion (?: with two different paper surfaces).  After going through ten tissues, I removed most of it, maybe close to all of it.  The problem with using too much liquid is that the substance will get washed into the mouth before it is removed, but it needs plenty of motion, not plenty of liquid.  ?: Why accidentally rinsing any liquid into the mouth causes detectable effects, (?: is that it probably has some sort of rinsing half-life, (?: or whatever is exposed does before more of it loosens up and becomes exposed)). (-- In that case, avoidance is probably a much worse strategy compared to removal.)

The thing causing delayed sniffles has disappeared again.  Alas, if your wipe doesn't accidentally contact your face, you don't need to wipe your cheeks or the cheek that was on your pillow.  You should wipe outside skin before inside the lips, starting from a broad cheek area, moving to a narrower cheek area, then start wiping in the lips.  This seemed to work before this mystery substance disappeared again.  This also seemed to mitigate the other substance's effects slightly even though I didn't do the entire lips, but I might not be able to confirm this.  You can't rinse all of the inside of your lips without accidentally ingesting some of that water, even if you spit it out and try rinse it out.

 

 

I slept like a baby. 😂

I have had dark circles under my eyes for some months or maybe a year.

You can stick your tongue at the can, if you're choosing avoidance over removal.  Without the tongue, the can's liquid goes toward the corners, and this tongue-ing seemed to mitigate the effects.

The mystery substance that caused a more delayed sniveling seemed to sit around in the saliva.  This became clear when I experienced its effects immediately after lying on my side.  However, it still had a pretty consistent onset time of two-and-a-half or three hours.

Finished!

[MonDie]

REVISION OF:  "The problem with using too much liquid is that the substance will get washed into the mouth before it is removed, but it needs plenty of motion, not plenty of liquid. ... You can't rinse all of the inside of your lips without accidentally ingesting some of that water, even if you spit it out and try rinse it out. ..."

This was based on a hypothesis that seemed to be the only hypothesis that could account.  It's also true that solids would pick the substance up if the lips had been wet within the hour.  This is potentially a confound since the act of rinsing was also incidentally moistening, and I would typically eat after doing it whereupon the solid foods picked it up.  This became a repeated observation.  However, I distinctly remember thinking that I wasn't going to drop the other hypothesis even though the two hypotheses potentially confound one another.

However, I found more corroboration for the hypothesis that foods could pick it up if the lips had been moist, and I would privilege it over the excess-liquid-spillage hypothesis, if the latter didn't also make a lot of sense and moreover to find corroboration.  That is, finding corroboration in the unsafeness of drinking from large bottles upon awakening, rather than small bottles, and how this was consistent with a spillage hypothesis that was only a small leap and could seem to be operating in at least one other context where no other hypothesis seemed to suffice.

[exchemist]

5 hours ago, MonDie said:

I won't be able to finish because people are withholding all money from me, into starvation.  This much became clear:

Whether it starts on the lip's corner from sleeping on my side (it probably does), it inevitably migrates across the lips where it becomes stuck on the surface, or dare I say in the epithelium, but the lips are sticky.  You can remove it by getting the lips mildly wet (?: setting for between immediately and twenty/thirty minutes) and applying plenty, plenty of motion (?: with two different paper surfaces).  After going through ten tissues, I removed most of it, maybe close to all of it.  The problem with using too much liquid is that the substance will get washed into the mouth before it is removed, but it needs plenty of motion, not plenty of liquid.  ?: Why accidentally rinsing any liquid into the mouth causes detectable effects, (?: is that it probably has some sort of rinsing half-life, (?: or whatever is exposed does before more of it loosens up and becomes exposed)). (-- In that case, avoidance is probably a much worse strategy compared to removal.)

The thing causing delayed sniffles has disappeared again.  Alas, if your wipe doesn't accidentally contact your face, you don't need to wipe your cheeks or the cheek that was on your pillow.  You should wipe outside skin before inside the lips, starting from a broad cheek area, moving to a narrower cheek area, then start wiping in the lips.  This seemed to work before this mystery substance disappeared again.  This also seemed to mitigate the other substance's effects slightly even though I didn't do the entire lips, but I might not be able to confirm this.  You can't rinse all of the inside of your lips without accidentally ingesting some of that water, even if you spit it out and try rinse it out.

 

 

I slept like a baby. 😂

I have had dark circles under my eyes for some months or maybe a year.

You can stick your tongue at the can, if you're choosing avoidance over removal.  Without the tongue, the can's liquid goes toward the corners, and this tongue-ing seemed to mitigate the effects.

The mystery substance that caused a more delayed sniveling seemed to sit around in the saliva.  This became clear when I experienced its effects immediately after lying on my side.  However, it still had a pretty consistent onset time of two-and-a-half or three hours.

Finished!

I really think you need to consider more anti-psychotic treatment. I'm no doctor, but some of what you are posting seems to me to have the hallmarks of mental disturbance, e.g. the irrelevant and implausible statement about people withholding money to starve you. 

[Bufofrog]

I agree with Exchemist.  Try this experiment, contact your doctor, get back on the anti-psychotic and see if the symptoms stop.  That seems like an easy thing to check out.  I hope you feel better.

[MonDie]

On 11/13/2021 at 10:02 AM, exchemist said:

I really think you need to consider more anti-psychotic treatment. I'm no doctor, but some of what you are posting seems to me to have the hallmarks of mental disturbance, e.g. the irrelevant and implausible statement about people withholding money to starve you. 

I never hallucinate; I've always only had pseudo-hallucinations.  I was diagnosed over seven years ago.  Why would I pay outrageous american healthcare bills if it will not help me?  Someone who owed money still owed me another $200 which they aggressively disputed.

---

I cracked a steam method, but I'm trying an easier method.  I will have in in under a week, and we will be moving in over a week.  The toothpaste is reacting with something on my pillow, creating a cocktail that is alternately focus impairing, scatter braining or conversely energizing, angering.  Although room temperature water is ineffective, what appears to be more effective is drinks and maybe especially sugary drinks and canned vegetable juices and soup liquids, but maybe not oily mushroom juice and some olive juices.  If anyone has a liquid to recommend, recommend it now.  I will have the final results in a week, and then we will be moved.  I won't have time for the complex task of pouring hot water over my pillow case as it is elevated above the ground or placed over non-porous surface covers like tin foil, so I'll probably be putting it on a clothes line.

Thank you.

Preview

Preview: the steam method involves steaming your face and then wiping your lips with a wet tissue.  The wet tissue doesn't need to be hot if the steam was hot.  However, you also have to dunk your toothbrush in hot water and remove it before the water cools.  Something on the tooth unsticks in the hot water.  It begins to restick as the water cools, making the method incomplete and rendering the container un-reuseable.

The new method involves rinsing your mouth as you brush your teeth, but water as it turns out does not work, or not room-temperature water.  Don't gurgle it or tip your head back or leave the toothpaste in your mouth too long, but spit it out and rinse it out ASAP as or after you have brushed your upper teeth front and back and the toothbrush has contacted your lips at the corners and the base.

on the tooth*brush*

[MonDie]

This addendum is probably not premature.  I'll also add that kombucha usually seems to work even though it is low sugar.

The last thing I tested was a mouthwash, and it didn't work.  I awoke after 4-5 hours.  Sleeplessness is one of two major effects I might experience when the rinsing liquid isn't effective.  Then I was awoken again, still tired, when we began moving the furniture.  That night I tried a sugar free energy drink, swishing some around and drinking the rest in the morning.  I awoke after 4-5 hours, and I drank the rest of the energy drink and showered on the next morning.  My tiredness combined with the circus-sized showerhead and lack of water pressure adjustment caused me to splash some droplets onto my lips.  This would normally be expected to interfere with the outcome, but this was shower water from the new house, not the old house.  On the next night, I tried a different sugar free energy drink, and I awoke after 4-5 hours but sleep returned surprisingly easily.  Since then, the old set of effects have changed and the sleeplessness hasn't returned.  It would appear that sugar free energy drinks and mouthwash do not work, and that was the last test I could do.  Nonetheless, a morning stuffy nose, the other main symptom and a symptom I've experienced for the last decade, is what persists.  I swapped my toothpaste out, and I still awoke with a stuffy nose.  I will have to figure out what is different with the water here before I continue onward.

I've also had a sugar-free, carbonated drink called Xevia.  It is about as ineffective as water for this purpose, but it appears to allow the stuffy nose to persist whereas diet soda at least eliminates the stuffy nose.  It is the sleeplessness that has disappeared completely.

The mushroom juice did allow me to sleep, but the mushroom juice was the only thing that kept me from falling asleep with a clogged, leaky nose symptoms that I usually experience when I accidentally touch my food.  I guess the ineffectiveness is two-dimensional, but the mushroom juice was the only thing apparently exhibiting this second dimension of ineffectiveness.

Addendum to that last part: I have had states where I would consistently sleep for 6-1/2 to 7 hours and then sleep would not return even though I didn't reach seven hours of sleep.  It was like something else counteracted the sleeplessness, but only for 6-1/2 hours.  The mushroom juice kept me up for so long that it might have overridden that.