An active mother, grandmother and award-winning and honored educator, Rose Marie Raccioppi knew she had to find a solution to her health problems.
Like millions of women in America she had cleaned her home and worked in her garden, using toxic cleaners and sprays. “Little did I know what ills the future would bring,” says Rose Marie.
A growing number of communities, physicians and medical researchers are concerned that the liberal use of insecticides, herbicides and other chemicals on home lawns and gardens may be hazardous to human health.
U.S. lawns and gardens use 70 million to 75 million pounds of pest-killing ingredients annually. These substances, some of which include potential carcinogens and hormone disrupters, may present hazards to people who apply them and may leach into groundwater, says an article published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
“Innocently I placed weed killer on the flower and shrub beds and paid little attention to the light headed feeling and annoying rash. I thought it would pass,” said Rose Marie.
“Spraying, cleaning, polishing--all seemingly noble deeds of a dutiful housewife resulted in headaches, skin rashes and a sinus infection that led to the use of antibiotics,” she says. “I had an allergic reaction to the pills, which resulted in the prescription of additional medication that brought about a pancreatic reaction and required hospitalization,” she explained.
Rose Marie developed food allergies and became hypersensitive to the smell of perfumes, tobacco, cosmetics, hair preparations, fabric finishes, carpets and household cleaning products. She was getting headaches, nausea and fatigue.
Then the final phase of her illness began--her symptoms became unbearable: utter fatigue, weakness, leg and knee swellings, headaches and body sores. She also got Lichen Planus, a disease that affects the skin, the mouth, or both with painful lesions. Rose Marie got it on her tongue and upper lip.
Rose Marie was at the end of her tether. “I could not live such a compromised existence--I had a successful private practice serving children and families with special education needs. I was the recipient of honors and awards, I had three devoted sons and two beautiful grandchildren, all reasons to celebrate this gift of life; not to be a victim of what ever was oppressing my health.”
She began to search for a solution to her health problems. At a meeting with a like-minded group of advocates for learning disabled children, Rose Marie heard about the New York Times best-selling book Clear Body Clear Mind by L. Ron Hubbard.
The book covers Mr. Hubbard's breakthrough research about how toxic residues get trapped in the fatty tissue of the body and affect our health--both physical and mental.
“Each chapter brought me closer and closer to the conviction that this was what I needed to consider,” she says. Rose Marie investigated the places that delivered the detoxification program outlined in the book, which is a carefully monitored program of nutrition, vitamins, exercise and sauna to release and sweat out the toxins trapped in the fatty tissue of the body.
Rose Marie was referred to a clinic in Sacramento that delivers this program. Although the program was vigorous and very demanding, as the program progressed, symptoms elevated and then subsided. The body seemed to re-experience the memory of each toxic experience.
When she was complete on the program Rose Marie felt as though a heavy fog had been lifted from her. “I am free of the devastating state I once lived. I can now enjoy the love and company of my family in good health,” she says.
And she felt so strongly about it that she needed to express her experience in another medium. Rose Marie took up painting and began to create vibrant watercolors. She is now a successful artist with her own website www.apogeeart.com.
“Each painting is a metaphor expressing the delight in life now lived,” says Rose Marie. “I am now age 64, an exhibiting artist, published poet and vigorous enough to maintain a private practice serving the needs of learners across the age span.”
Clear Body Clear Mind makes no medical claims and the benefits vary from person to person. To find out more about the detoxification program, visit www.clearbodyclearmind.com
Louis Steiner is a freelance author in the field of health.