intrudes into the styles of elements that don't want the page's styles.
Yes, intrusion will happen if you use *
, so instead drive the style for your specific element:
a, my-header ^ a, body ^^ my-header ^ a { .. }
Fwiw, I don't think anybody is in love with this syntax, but that's the CSS that is supported today.
There are fancier solutions involving additional custom elements to manage dynamic, shared style-sheets, but it's a larger topic. Polymer will offer some kind of solution around these lines before long.