My name is Nelie Shah. My first name is pronounced Nealy. I’ve always been a curious person and adventurous traveler. After completing 13 months of cancer treatment in December of 2012, I bought a one-way ticket around the world and traveled by myself for a few months in late 2013. I was determined to live my life to the fullest. I had stage 1 breast cancer, but after two scares in 2013 I decided I better take the time to start really living the heck out of life before I didn’t have the opportunity to do so. I took the photo on the home page from a helicopter without doors on it in the Great Barrier Reef. I landed on glaciers and jumped off mountains in New Zealand. I traveled by air, bus, car, train and never imagined that regular daily activities that I took for granted would ever become a problem for me. Luckily, I am still cancer free – knock on wood!

In late March of 2017, however, my entire life flipped upside down when I got environmental poisoning and a condition called multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) or environmental illness (EI). I had rented a condo in Florida that had recently been painted and renovated and within days I became very sick – sore throat, headache, laryngitis. I thought I had a bad cold. Each day I became increasingly sick. After about 10-12 days, I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t move my hands and feet. Stepping on my feet felt as if they were fractured. I was in agonizing pain and terrified. But when I would leave the condo I would feel better. My symptoms would be alleviated and my voice would become somewhat more normal. It took me over a month to realize that the chemicals in the condo were making me sick but I had to figure it out myself. Typical Western physicians were not helpful nor did they understand - they just wanted me to take more allergy medication, pills and inhalers and more pills. I knew my body and I knew pills and inhalers weren't the answer.

Initially, I stopped being able to tolerate any new construction due to my reaction to the chemicals incorporated into so many of our everyday products and construction materials. Then, I became dizzy, nauseous and had difficulty breathing when I was exposed to any synthetic fragrance. Meaning I could smell and eat an orange but if orange scented air freshener was sprayed or a candle was lit that had an orange “scent” I would become violently sick.

My health continued to deteriorate and my inability to find a suitable place to live seemed implausible and impossible. By January of 2018, I was literally homeless and sleeping on a couch in my parents’ assisted living apartment. This was the only reason I was in Florida – to take care of and spend time with my mother who had late-stage Alzheimer's. My belongings were all in storage at that point and most of them ended up being thrown away due to chemical infestation from the condo that made me sick.

I truly thought I was doomed to move away from civilization. I was told that the mountains or the woods were where I could find breathable air. I could no longer put on skin cream or makeup. I couldn’t dye my hair much less even go into a hair salon to get a haircut. I couldn’t go to the grocery store, movies, indoor restaurants, the gym or anywhere that most people take for granted. I started to wear a Cambridge mask when I would go into stores and venues where fragrance or chemicals permeated the environment and thankfully it really helped! I was just ahead of the curve in terms of wearing a mask lol. I had worked in Hollywood. I ran my own company in New York City for 16 years. I had a very busy work, social and travel life. But that was all over. My situation felt almost worse than cancer because no one understood what was wrong with me. There was no treatment and no one had a plan. I also had nowhere safe to live. I went from thriving to struggling to merely survive.

But then, I started to research night and day. I read. I watched documentaries. Listened to countless podcasts from all the leading global medical professionals and researchers. I learned about functional medicine and the root cause of disease. I learned about the microbiome. I scoured the internet for information about my condition. What I read and saw about the chemicals and toxins pervading every inch of our daily lives horrified me. It seemed like everywhere I went, there was new construction, new floors or toxic paint, air freshener or someone wearing perfume or scented laundry detergent that made me dizzy and feel awful. I had brain fog, intense body pain and was unable to breathe. There was no escape.

Unable to find a safe place to live in Florida, I moved back to the northeast and spent the late spring and most of the summer, fall and winter of 2018 and early 2019 living in a virtual bubble. I avoided chemicals as much as possible, drank clean water from a mega filter I put in the house where I was living and cooked and ate all organic vegetables. And lots of fermented vegetables. No booze. No sugar. No bread. No products with any kind of fragrance whatsoever. I couldn’t fix or do anything that required even a miniscule amount of chemicals in the house. I wiped the house down from top to bottom with white vinegar and threw out everything with any sort of fragrance. Even clothing and linens that had never bothered me in my whole life smelled awful and made me dizzy and sick.

Visitors, of which there were very few, had to change into t-shirts and fragrance-free clothing I provided for them. Sometimes I even had to ask them to shower to rinse all the fragrance off their body while I choked handing them clothes and directed them to a bathroom. It wasn’t perfect but it was the first time in over a year that I had a bed, a kitchen where I could cook, a place to breathe and I didn’t feel like I was going to die.

As I started to learn and a few close friends did research, we found there were support groups online. I discovered that there were tens of thousands of people around the world that had the same condition. None of us knew each other but the symptoms were the same, reactions the same, issues the same. I contacted a few people with my condition. I started to feel a bit better knowing I wasn’t alone per se but it was still very isolating.

What I learned along the way was, avoiding harmful chemicals doesn’t mean that you won’t smell good or have great products or super soft sheets or shiny hair. It DOES MEAN that you will feel better than you probably do now, you will look great and maybe live longer in a healthy state of being. When all of this started, I honestly thought I was living a pretty “green and organic” life. I hadn’t eaten meat in years. I had done what I thought was a ton of research when I got cancer. I threw out almost every personal care product (skin, hair, body, makeup) I owned no matter how expensive based on researching the chemicals. And that was in 2011. But every year there are more synthetic chemicals added to products and quite often these chemicals are not regulated by any governmental entity. And certainly not to the extent that they are regulated in countries outside the United States. I strongly encourage you to watch the movie STINK! on YouTube as one starting point which succinctly documents the absence of government regulation and lack of transparency surrounding the word “fragrance”.

It’s been a long battle and uphill climb over the past several years. I was and will always be incredibly grateful that my research, tenacity and resilience allowed me to recover to the point where I am now. So after living in my virtual bubble for the greater part of a year, I learned that there are many products on the market that help you live a sexy and fabulous, but chemical and synthetic fragrance-free life! I use things that have scent but they are made with REAL ingredients and do not have the catch all word for chemicals "fragrance" on the label.

I’ve created this site as a resource for information and products that helped me stabilize my condition, at least in my home, and now some have even improved my quality of life and skin. I have become a chemical-free advocate, champion and promoter. I don’t care if it takes one person at a time but I am determined to make people aware of the things that are making us all sick. What happened to me shouldn’t happen to anyone. I truly hope you will find my site to be enlightening and informative in terms of creating a toxin-free, low or no volatile organic compound (VOC) lifestyle. Knowledge is power and you don’t know what you don’t know.

People are not magically getting all of the chronic diseases we are seeing. Increasing amounts of autism and children with ADHD, ADD and other medical conditions aren’t happening by accident. People are eating, drinking, breathing and living in environments which contain more toxic chemicals than ever before. An embryo forming and growing that is being fed petroleum and chemicals from food and plastic is not an ideal scenario. Eating meat that has been injected with hormones and raised on animal feed containing antibiotics, herbicides and fungicides isn’t going to do you any health favors no matter how good you might think it tastes. Again, I believe there are only two reasons you get sick: DNA and your environment. You can’t control everything but you CAN control a significant amount of your internal and external environment.

I am resolute in my desire to create a chemical-free lifestyle movement that doesn't require one to hide in the woods or live in a bubble. Come along on my journey and make it yours! #getgreenwithnelie #neliesgonegreen

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