PurSleep Product Safety

Browser wrote:

swcompassionate wrote:SAG,

I never meant any disrespect by my comments. I am so sorry to hear about your difficulties with exposures to a majority of products, cleaners, etc. I hope that living close to the ocean is helping with the breathing difficulties that you experience on a daily basis. I think you called it environmental illness. I do hope things get better for you. I know I enjoy pur-sleep and it might be worth and investigative study to study the long term effects of the essential oils. I am not the owner I just enjoy their product. Hopefully, you find success with the CPAP without the extra smell help. Good luck with your treatment and I hope you find the answers you are looking for here on this thread. Many others are much more educated about this topic than myself. Good luck wished to you.

Maria

I think this was meant for Jules not SAG ... Jules suffers from "MSTL" multisesitivitytoliving disorder ...

I have a number of sensitivities. One is to silicone in masks, others are to odors. (I would call them allergies, but they either do not show up as an allergy or there isn't a test, yet.) I tried Pur-Sleep, and only the lavender seemed to work for me. That only worked the first night or two. I'm just not a Pur-Sleep kind of person, I guess.

That said, I do know that there are things that bother me without being able to be documented by my allergist. I'm not one to say that Pur-Sleep is bad, or good. We all know ourselves and our own bodies, and have to make decisions based on that.

Pur-Sleep has helped a lot of forum members to tolerate, if not outright enjoy, their CPAP therapy. That means that it is helping, and not hurting. I wish that we all could look at CPAP treatment and discussions of it in that same way.

Karen,
Who supports whatever it takes for a CPAP user to use CPAP

Not sure where my post went but anyway, how do you make it through this if you are sensitive to silicone? Just curious because I thought every mask out there is silicone. I am allergic to many things but thank goodness silicone doesn't appear to be one. This treatment is enough to process without that issue. As far as pursleep I just don't smell it after a couple of minutes so I see no use for it really for me. I did start using a plug in device in several rooms with a vanilla essential oil but I only notice it when I first walk-in the house unfortunately. I wish I could smell it all the time but I just don't.

I'm sure I've done more damage to my lungs with 40+ years of burning incense than my use of pur-sleep oils since starting xPAP therapy. I also traveled into the Santa Clara valley every day for 25 years -- which makes the particulate matter in incense minor in comparison. Because my sense of smell has been compromised by allergy drugs I tend to use more of the oil than most. Not detecting the fragrance after a few minutes is a function of the brain - you can still smell the fragrance, but the brain has determined that it is a "pleasant" odor and not offensive, so it tunes it out but your subconscious still knows it's there.
If you live in a city you have more chance of lung damage from simply breathing than smelling flowers, cleaning agents, room deodorizers or a few drops of EO.
I've used 2 different EO's as "perfume" for over 40 years (patchouli and nag champa oils applied to the body - started about 1962) and I have to admit that until 1975 I had severe lung issues, but I've had no lung issues since then (I quit smoking cigarettes). I also took a year off the oils when I was overseas.

Unless you live in a bubble, I find any worry about a few molecules of EO entering your lungs to be folly.....Breathing the air on this planet is far more dangerous to your health......

Time to put a few drops of pur-sleep oil on the diffuser (I think I'll do Fresh tonight) and mask up...........
Just my two cents based on 59 years of experience.......

cheers
goose

jnk wrote:

Debjax wrote: . . . your problem with the product . . .

Frankly, I think he just has a thing for lungs.

You bet. And a background note, this renewed interest in aromatherapy and exogenous lipoid pneumonia came about from grabbing a copy of Clinical Pulmonary Medicine (Volume 14 Issue 6 from November 2007) on the way to the (actually not all that important) where there were two "State of the Art" articles (in the book):

Inhalation Airway Injury: A Spectrum of Changes; and

Complementary Medicines and Pulmonary Toxicities: What a Chest Physician Should Know

Not that I read an awful lot, but I was inspired by this poster:

goose wrote:.....Read, read, read.....knowledge is power!!!!

Although, did you know that the search phrase "Knowledge Is Power" yields only 71 results on the site?

birdshell wrote:Pur-Sleep has helped a lot of forum members to tolerate, if not outright enjoy, their CPAP therapy. That means that it is helping, and not hurting. I wish that we all could look at CPAP treatment and discussions of it in that same way.

Karen,
Who supports whatever it takes for a CPAP user to use CPAP

Me too, so if it appears I am slanting a little too far to one side, let me try to give a little more weight to the "Aromatherapy = Good" side by changing my sig to what "IMO" are good selections.

SAG

C'mon, SAG, if knowledge is power, would you mind terribly sharing some of that power with those that know less? I was all geared to read read read, and found you linked me to an abstract full of generalities, Complementary Medicines and Pulmonary Toxicities: What a Chest Physician Should Know
and then leads to this when you try to read more:

You are attempting to access protected content

Same with the other link, which has the same problem: an abstract with general statements that does not lead us to anything we haven't heard yet -

Lungs can be harmed be things we inhale. They can even be harmed by the herbal stuff in CAM. That point is well understood.

What is the percentage of harmful stuff in Pur-Sleep oils?

Would you insist that the "good stuff" you recommend does not contain phenols and esthers, etc?

Price aside - is this good stuff just as dangerous to put on a dispenser as Pur-Sleep? (Does it kill birds and woodpeckers?)

Is it in any way safer to use the cheaper oils

StillAnotherGuest wrote: You can buy 2 to 6 times that quantity on Amazon, eBay, ANYWHERE, for the same price, and if the key component is the "Diffuser System", you can use the new and improved

"SAG 'n Sleep II"

<snip> the revolutionary adhesive anchor system, that you can make yourself with items found around the house.

Do you have any information that made you change your mind about the danger of dispensing the stuff near a cpap? After all, it was you who suggested the "SAG 'n Sleep II" not so long ago....
O.

ozij wrote: would you mind terribly sharing some of that power with those that know less?

Sorry there o., I was only attempting to explain to deb why I had renewed interest in those subjects. While I am happy to share everything I can, I cannot abuse any permissions I may have.

ozij wrote: What is the percentage of harmful stuff in Pur-Sleep oils?

Bret needs to produce the MSDS sheets.

ozij wrote: Would you insist that the "good stuff" you recommend does not contain phenols and esthers, etc?

No.

ozij wrote:Price aside - is this good stuff just as dangerous to put on a dispenser as Pur-Sleep? (Does it kill birds and woodpeckers?)

IMO, it has just as much potential for abuse.

ozij wrote:Is it in any way safer to use the cheaper oils

My example was not "cheap", that was a real example of a wholesale price from a reputable dealer. But for me, I'd go with Marge or Anatolian Treasures, and some of those products can be a little pricey.

BTW, cheap stuff can have pesticide residual, and once you concentrate that a hundred-fold, now you have a BIG problem.

ozij wrote:Do you have any information that made you change your mind about the danger of dispensing the stuff near a cpap?

I do not see where anything has changed...

use SAG n' Sleep II with stuff from Marge (shameless plug for Nature's Gift) and just stick it someplace else in the room.

As noted in my original posts, I really want to see the lung function results of long term users of that mode of delivery (high concentrations over prolonged periods). Clearly, there will be dose (concentration)- and exposure-dependent effects, and I think it is important to identify where breakpoint is.

SAG

Thank you, SAG. That makes sense.

It's OK about the links, I did not, of course mean sharing codes to privileged sites (I wouldn't do that either), I was only thinking of sharing the relevant knowledge hidden within those papers. However I do understand how the papers themselves my have brought up the renewed thoughts about Pur-Sleep.

Oh, and I'm glad you mentioned the pesticide it the cheap stuff, because I was thinking of that too.
O.

Reading this blasted thread over and over made me think, "Don't just sit here, do something." I had a sample kit of PurSleep oils and had tried one many months ago for only one night. So last night I tried a drop of "Paradise" flavor on a diffuser pad placed near the CPAP intake. I woke up about 15 times last night!

rooster wrote:Reading this blasted thread over and over made me think, "Don't just sit here, do something." I had a sample kit of PurSleep oils and had tried one many months ago for only one night. So last night I tried a drop of "Paradise" flavor on a diffuser pad placed near the CPAP intake. I woke up about 15 times last night!

That's funny, Rooster, because Paradise, much as I love the smell of it, is the only one that I suspect of waking me too. Though not 15 times...
O.

ozij wrote: .......Though not 15 times...
O.

I am not sure how well I was able to count under the circumstances!

Paradise didn't do anything for me either. I don't recall it waking me, but it's been many moons since I tried it.
I have 4 regulars that I rotate through -- I mixed at first, but found that the fragrances by themselves worked best......
I use Peace, Spice, Fresh and Clear......
I don't use my "perfume" oils because I'm not sure of their purity for that application. They've never had an adverse effect as body oils as far as I know (40+ years of usage)....

cheers
goose

rooster wrote:Reading this blasted thread over and over made me think, "Don't just sit here, do something." I had a sample kit of PurSleep oils and had tried one many months ago for only one night. So last night I tried a drop of "Paradise" flavor on a diffuser pad placed near the CPAP intake. I woke up about 15 times last night!

Doesn't that just make you wonder what John Milton might have said under those same circumstances...

-SWS wrote:

rooster wrote:Reading this blasted thread over and over made me think, "Don't just sit here, do something." I had a sample kit of PurSleep oils and had tried one many months ago for only one night. So last night I tried a drop of "Paradise" flavor on a diffuser pad placed near the CPAP intake. I woke up about 15 times last night!

Doesn't that just make you wonder what John Milton might have said under those same circumstances...

Good one Goose!

Maybe in Paradise, you want to stay awake all night.

BTW, I have samples of Spice, Deep and Clear. Anyone know which of these would be most likely to help me sleep tonight?

SleepGuy wrote: So much for staying on task: I just went to my local gym and spent about 20 minutes in the steam room, inhaling copious amounts of some kind of Vics-camphor-menthol-eucalyptus kind of stuff--in STEAM--and it made me wonder whether it was damaging my lungs. And then I got to thinking about all of the Vics products. And that reminded me of the Vaseline thread. So with Vics we have a 100 year old product that is nothing more than petroleum jelly mixed with copious amounts of camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus essential oils.

And millions of well-meaning, caring mothers worldwide spread gobs of that stuff all over their babies' noses, faces, and chests when they are sick so their kid can breathe copious amounts of rather strong essential oils AND petroleum jelly right into their lungs ALL NIGHT. And by the way, camphor is very strong stuff--Tisserand has some concerns about its use (and it's not on the GRAS list).

Appealing to Vicks VapoRub might not be your best defense here, Sleep Guy. Well-meaning, caring mothers may be misinformed.

So it made me wonder, how do those VICS people get away with it?

Who knows? Maybe, as snoredog would lament, science just hasn't caught up to them yet.


Sleep Guy, when you say that EOs have GRAS status, isn't that just as a food additive? Stomachs are a lot tougher to damage than lungs. I am not aware of GRAS being applied to inhalants, but I admit right here and now that I have limited understanding of the issue.

On the other hand, I think I inhale things every day that are likely to be a LOT more dangerous than EOs, though admittedly I don't do that for 8 hours a day, 365 days a year. Normally when the safety of something hasn't been shown, people err on the side of caution and would just avoid it. But if I could just say this, someone had a great post about risk analysis, and if Pur Sleep keeps someone using CPAP therapy when they might not otherwise, then I've got to think Pur Sleep is something they should continue to do. Even if it just helps them sleep better, it's probably still a good decision to use it.

SAG wrote:Good to see you, -SWS! So are you doing better or what? If things haven't improved, maybe a trip to "The First City" for "A Second Opinion" is in order!

Hey, thanks for asking! Much better.

I don't know why those little respiratory microbes decided to hang around for so many weeks after Thanksgiving. The two best theories I could come up with were: 1) consistently poor sleep might have impaired my autoimmune response (that poor sleep complements of my trigeminal neuralgia), and/or 2) LPR may have exacerbated or extended the residual effects of my respiratory infection. For all those weeks after my nasty respiratory bug, I couldn't completely shake the additional symptoms of inner-ear fluid-fill w/ clicking, prolific post-nasal drainage, recurring sore throats, recurring low-to-mid grade fevers, recurring slight hoarseness, etc.

So I asked my GI specialist to take an "opposite-end" peek----since I was also a tad overdue for a colonoscopy. Those dueling endoscopic exams were almost two weeks ago (remember Martin Mull's hilarious tuba parody of "Dueling Banjos? I think I got him beat.). Anyway, my GI specialist discovered that I truly was under-treated for my acid reflux problem, based on his visual observation. So I don't know if those really were LPR symptoms piling on top of my respiratory infection. But they may have been. I'm still waiting for my inner ears to completely clear up, though.

As a side note, I had those same "never-ending" symptoms many years ago, when I suffered from undiagnosed acid reflux disease and very likely undiagnosed apnea as well. Not to hijack this important thread. Just to report in. Feeling much better now.

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Anyway, back to the PurSleep topic... I think I agree with Karen on this one. For the present lack of well-designed independent studies, I think people will have to apply their own best judgment regarding the use of PurSleep. If PurSleep is "the" deciding compliance factor, then it probably makes sense to use PurSleep (or any other comparable essential oil(s) deemed "safe for consumption" by the FDA). Under those circumstances I believe the well-known health risks of CPAP non-compliance are likely far greater than the currently (empirically) unknown health risks of using PurSleep. However, I personally don't see the point in using PurSleep if someone perceives that sensory pleasure is their only benefit in using PurSleep. Just my opinion.

I tried only part of the PurSleep sampler pack. I discovered that one drop sitting anywhere on my night stand is too strong for at least two or three nights. I literally had to place the diffuser pad way over on my dresser until night three or four. Since I'm well-adjusted to CPAP (when my TN isn't flaring up), that just seemed like too much work. So I abandoned my PurSleep trial.

I still think if PurSleep helps anyone make CPAP compliance, then it may very well be a lifesaver for them.