Hot flashes are characterized by a sudden feeling of heat often accompanied with a reddening of face and profuse sweating. For some, it is as mild as a brief warm flushing of face and skin. For others, it is experienced as an intense heat on face and upper body with intense sweating. Sometimes hot flashes are also accompanied by an increased heart rate, nausea, dizziness, anxiety, weakness or a feel of suffocation.

Physiologically speaking, hot flashes are body’s reaction to a decreased supply of estrogen. Typically this occurs when a women approaches menopause. Every woman’s experience of this important life change is different, unpredictable and highly individual and they all follow their own pattern. In some production of estrogen decreases gradually, producing few flashes. In others, ovaries stop abruptly or start and stop before production ends completely. For these women, hot flashes can become tricky.

Dropping estrogen levels confuse hypothalamus (the part of brain that controls appetite, sleep, sex hormones and temperature), where it makes body think it is too hot. This activates body’s heat releasing mechanism where it causes blood vessels in skin to expand, increasing blood flow to help dissipate heat. At same time, sweat glands begin producing sweat in an effort to cool body off even more.

SMELL! The sound of word itself brings a poor feeling out of most people. Granted, in some cultures [like France], smells evoke a hint of romance. To most cultures it evokes need to clean out refrigerator.

When doctors can’t seem to keep people well, they often call us to check patient’s home for infectious materials like mold.

One thing is common to all these houses – smell. Sometimes we can follow our noses to cause of these diseases.

When we go into schools, we tend to notice that more school smells, more kids have ADHD.

In Middle Ages, physicians believed diseases, like plague, were caused by smells and gases. One treatment for plague was roses. Remember old rhyme, “Roses, Roses, We all fall down.”

http://www.kitchendoctor.com/articles/four_thieves.html http://www.midtermpapers.com/15040.htm

No smell doesn’t cause diseases. But things that stink can cause many diseases.

TRASH This, of course, is most obvious. Flies and other bugs eat trash and then bite us. Solution: Clean trash can. Few families have enough trash to cause disease. But we have seen some. Some people never throw away anything. Stacks of newspapers in a moist environment can feed many infectious agents.

http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar95/jan0395/trash.html

GAS No, not an upset stomach. We had one family that had a sick child. His bedroom door was beside gas fireplace in den. We walked into house and immediately called gas company because gas fireplace had a leak. That was a simple case.

Some people close their garage door after parking car. The hot car will give off gases for up to 20 minutes. The same thing will happen if you park a hot lawn mower in crawlspace under house.

MOISTURE This is biggest cause of stinky homes AND sick kids.

We were invited to investigate a home where 2 kids were sick. Their immune systems were so compromised that their doctor pulled them out of school. She was afraid that they would pick up something from another child. In their compromised state they would be unable to fight off even a simple cold.

Their laundry room was stinky.

http://themoldlab.com/Mytcotoxins.htm