Scott Desgrosseilliers

Allergy Testing

Imagine getting scratched 280 times on your forearm and looking for spots.  If any spots show up, you know you have 100 shots in your future.  That is what you are committing to if you decide to undergo an allergy scratch test. 

I always felt an allergy test to be the holy grail of medical testing.  Find out what you are allergic to, eliminate it, and health-free bliss would be the result.  How I miss that illusion.  The results of my allergy scratch test left me puzzled and still looking for the elusive perfect health regimen.

When you take the allergy test, the doctor makes 140 pen dots on your forearms.  You then receive a drop of 140 different weed, tree, animal, mold, and food oils on your skin.  Each drop is scratched a few times and you wait to see if it turns red or starts to itch.  If it does, you are allergic.  If it doesn't, you are not allergic.

I got all my drops and scratches and sat for 10 minutes waiting for the results.  The results came pretty quickly.  I had a couple of rapidly expanding red blobs on my left forearm.  My right forearm did not react at all, was this a placebo arm or something?  Come to find out, my right forearm had all the food allergy testing.  I did not have any food allergies at all.  Meanwhile, my left arm had approximately 10 red blobs that itched or were inflamed to some degree.  It was determined that I am allergic to cedar, birch, maple, and oak trees.  A couple of random molds and dust mites were also on the allergy list, along with dog hair.

These results puzzled me.  How could I not have a food allergy when my stomach gets achy and bloated at least one meal a day.  I had long operated under the assumption that my stomach problems were to a food allergy that I just needed to determine and avoid.

Then the allergist mentioned cross reaction allergies.  A cross reaction allergy occurs when a particular weed, mold, or tree is in season.  Breathing the allergen into your body causes it to mix with the foods you eat.  Certain foods don't mix with certain trees and molds.

I was initially elated to find this out.  I anxiously awaited the doctor's advice on my cross reaction allergy diet.  The dietary holy grail was finally mine!  Avoid the foods listed and I would be super healthy!  I received a one-page fax with the diet instructions.  It said that tree season was February to may and that I needed to avoid carrots, celery, and apples because they would mix with my tree allergens and cause problems.

Uhh.....yeah...that's great.  I had barely touched any of the 3 food items over the past couple months.  Actually I had maybe ate a salad once a week, which never has celery in it because Melissa doesn't like celery, and I haven't had an apple this year.  The cross reaction allergy diet would provide no relief!  So as much as I loved the theory, I am once again back to the dietary holy grail search.

Fantasy Baseball Drafts Are Like First Dates

A fantasy baseball auction has a lot in common with a first date that involves drinking.  There is some awkward conversation at the start and nervous tension fills the air.  A few comments that are kind of funny get over-laughed at.  And a few people are over eager.  Fortunately (unless you have a high school aged daughter) there is alcohol to smooth out the inhibitions.  You start feeling good about things due to the alcohol-impaired judgment.  But in the sober morning reality you realize your date/team was not as good as you thought.  Let me explain further.

At the beginning of a first date, things don’t always flow smoothly.  People are still in their own heads and unadjusted to the social interaction of a date.  You size up the other person's appearance, facial expressions, tone of voice, its a nonstop judge-fest.  At a fantasy baseball auction, owners are groggy from the night before, or dealing with wives or girlfriends that need care and explanation on why we all are off with our buddies drinking for 14 hours one day a year.  All of us are older and haven't spent enough time doing our cheatsheets so we are kind of anxious.  Not in a public speaking anxiety kind of way, more of a "I didn't do my homework and the teacher decided to collect it today" way.  So both a date and a fantasy auction have the initial jitters.

As the date starts to unfold, a lot of small talk is usually made over drinks or dinner.  A person might start speaking on a date and find themselves staring in shock and awe at the words that are coming out, thinking "why the hell am I saying that, I can't stand Hillary Clinton!" while their mouths are telling their date "I totally agree with you, its about time we had Hillary in 2008".  This foot-in-mouth disease strikes fantasy baseball auctions equally fierce.  Your mind will wail in agony as your mouth makes the words "I bid 20 on Barry Zito".  Its almost as if there can be 3 different "yous" on a date/fantasy auction - Your mind, your mouth, and then the independent 3rd observer (drunken fantasy buddhism).  The disconnect between mind-mouth-self is a universal occurrence, and it happens both on dates and at fantasy baseball auctions.

Sometime during a first date that involves a few beers or cocktails, the participants relax, jokes fly, and a bond is formed.  Perhaps you notice that your date is more attractive than you initially thought.  You may even entertain thoughts that "this could be the one".  The same damn things happens with your fantasy baseball team!  You are 8 beers deep before the sun goes down, you think everyone's one-liners are hilarious, and you LOVE how your draft is going.  In fact, you think that you will probably win the title this year!

The morning after the first date reality sets in.  She had an annoying laugh or said nothing intelligent for 3 hours.  Or you wake up and realize you still have horrific garlic breath and probably spew noxious fumes all over her when you talked all night.  You wince as you realize the date was probably not that great and you turn on your computer to check email and search for new candidates.

After a fantasy baseball auction, the next morning you wake up with bad breath from all of the nasty junk food and draft beer from the night before.  You look at your team on paper and realize it is not nearly as good as you thought it was.  And you get on the computer to  look for new players to add to your team.

Forest Gump once said that life is like a box of chocolates.  He could've also said fantasy baseball is like a booze-filled first date.

Women Unscripted

A long journey that began with The Luge Effect concept is now something we are calling Women Unscripted.  Dedicated readers and fellow Chicago party people may recall the Luge Effect:  Part-movie idea,  part social perception experiment, and a great reason to throw the party of the summer.  After months of pouring over the tapes from the Luge Effect, two things emerged.  The original concept of showing social perception before, during, and after a party was not being satisfied with the footage we’d captured.  BUT, and this was a huge but, the pre-party footage of the women Luge Effect stars was fascinating.  So we kept our minds open and slowly spun the narrative around the lives of our Chicago women.  Here is the trailer for the show:

Our goal is to create a reality show that captures city women in their dramatic everyday lives.  Think Sex and the City meets the Real World with a dash of American Idol style voting.  In addition to the theme of the trailer you just watched, we intend to implement a virtual girlfriend on the show.  Viewers will be able to call/text/web-form a vote on a ladies’ social situation and the lady will be fed the information real-time to decide how she is going to handle her life.

The Treatment.  A treatment is the format that a tv show gets pitched and evaluated against other shows.

The Website.  Explore and learn more.

One Year of Blogging

One year seems like a long period of time.  Hell, if I have to wait a week for something it feels too long.  I was tinkering with my blog layout and found that my archives extended back into March 2007.  It hit me I’d been blogging for over a year.

A blog comes in handy for doing a life year review…whether you want to or not.  It’s all there on the screen and in public for people to see what you’ve been up to.  When I look over my blog articles for the year, a number of things stick out at me.

My most viewed blog article:  the engagement story, 370 views on 12/13/2007.  My favorite story gets the most views.

My most viewed photo album : the luge effect party,  4336 views on 6/20/2007.  Nothing excites people like video cameras and the promise of reality tv!

The most popular google search term that I get hits for : “Water on the elbow”.  I remember that I wrote this blog because I was frustrated that I couldn’t find good information on it when I googled around for it.

I wrote most about travel and least about scott news. 

People got very irritated with my city vs. the burbs post.  Readers loved the frouple story while my favorite topics are about human perception.  My mother wanted to me to stop writing about getting drunk with my friends after the brewery tour post. 

I wish I didn’t post about the triathlon, because I didn’t do it and now I feel like I have to this year.

It is tricky to keep up the pace of blogging.  Sometimes, like this month for example, life gets too hectic and you just don’t have the time or care to post.  I moved in my fiancée this month, undertook an allergy shot regiment that left me sick as a dog, completed a bunch of wedding related items, and spent many many hours preparing a new meditation website I am launching next month.  All of these activities have given me great ideas on future blog posts, but I have found that when you are inspired to blog, you have to get in front of the pc and do it.  Otherwise it is 4 days later and you forgot why you wanted to blog about something to begin with.

This year I pledge to post more.  I have slacked lately and it keeps bothering me that I can’t get off my ass to post a few topics a week.  I’ve got a few interesting things going on that I look forward to sharing with my faithful readers –

• Women Unscripted.  The Luge Effect tv project took a twist and became a reality tv proposal to document women living the big city life.  More on this in a week.
• TheMeditationMind.com – I am going through a process to plan, market, and monetize a website idea around meditation.
• Personal Development book – I post from time to time on personal development.  I am going to continue doing that and use the basis of the blogs as a book outline.
• Wedding in September – Listed last here but first in importance, there should be a few entertaining stories to come out of the wedding journey.

Thanks for reading this past year.

Aromatherapy

I was dismayed and irritated to read that one of today’s google news top headlines was “Aromatherapy Falls Short”.  Under the headline it showed that almost 200 news outlets were already running the story that you can read here.  I read the article and had to shake my head at this pathetic attempt at a study and how badly it tested aromatherapy.

Aromatherapy involves using essential oils to facilitate healing.  There are a wide variety of treatments that fall under the aromatherapy umbrella.  A therapist can call something aromatherapy when they put a certain scent in the air.  Aromatherapy might involve a massage where the therapist mixes essential oils with the massage oil.  Or Aromatherapy could involve using essential oils with prescribed methods of inducing them into the skin.

The test of aromatherapy in this study involved repeatedly putting on and ripping off a piece of tape.  It seems to me these study authors have not experienced a true treatment, because there is no relevance between how a patch of skin feels after you have smelled a certain scent, versus how you feel after a true aromatherapy treatment.  And yet it is headline news that aromatherapy doesn’t work after this study!

Last Saturday I learned how to give a raindrop essential oil aromatherapy treatment.  The best part of this lesson was being the recipient.  There is a prescribed set of pure essential oils, spread on the body in specific places, in a specific order, with specific strokes and massage moves.  The effect on the body is pretty significant.  I showed up for the treatment feeling somewhat tired from a long weekend of moving.  After my 45-minute raindrop essential oil aromatherapy treatment, my head was extremely clear and lucid.  My energy level had skyrocketed and I was in a great mood.  There is little doubt that my body and wellbeing was significantly better after this treatment.

I admit my experience does not negate a study.  But the details of the study were so far off from a true aromatherapy treatment, I don’t see how the authors could use it to debunk aromatherapy.  Trust me, you want to check out an aromatherapy treatment yourself.  There should be little doubt that your experience will leave you better off than before the treatment.