Continuing on this controversial subject, I would like to posit another relatively outlandish notion, and that is that some people may be sensitive to cold, as an environmental factor, in the same way that some people are sensitive to wheat or lactose intolerant.
Now, before you dismiss me entirely, humor me for one moment and suspend your belief in Western Medicine and Germ Theory. You can come back to it later.
I must remind you of three basic theorems of Allergy Elimination. They are:
1. An Allergy, according to Allergy Elimination, is anything you are not in harmony with, and includes sensitivities, intolerances, and hypersensitivity reactions.
2. You can be sensitive to, intolerant of, or allergic to pretty much anything on the planet.
3. Allergy elimination helps your immune system.
Environmental factors are things like heat, cold, dampness, dryness, wind, and barometric pressure. Environmental factors can either cause sensitivity in and of themselves, or they can combine with other things you might be sensitive to and cause a stronger reaction.
So for the purposes of this article, let's focus on COLD as an environmental factor. Some people do better in cold weather. Some do better in warmer weather. If you are sensitive to cold, here are some symptoms you might experience:
runny nose
aching muscles
constipation
fatigue
nasal congestion
headache
joint stiffness
Now, the funny thing about these symptoms is that they look a lot like a cold! How do you tell the difference?
Think about the DURATION of the symptoms and what happened directly preceding the onset of the symptoms. Did your “cold” start when the weather changed? Do you get a cold that lasts all winter and disappears when it gets warm again? If so, chances are, it's not a cold! You might just be sensitive to cold.
From the vantage point of allergy elimination, cold can affect specific organs in your body. If it affects your colon, you might get constipated. If it affects your stomach, you might have stomach pains, or you might experience a loss of appetite. If you are sensitive to cold, it usually affects the lungs, because as the air temperature drops, your lungs are directly exposed to the drop in temperature. Hence, you might have a cough, or runny nose, or sore throat.
Treating your sensitivities with allergy elimination will boost your immune system in many ways. For one thing, it will prevent those symptoms from occurring. An allergic or sensitivity reaction is hard on your body. Eliminating the sensitivity will basically cut down on the number of things your body has to deal with on a daily basis. And you'll feel better, too.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
When A Cold Is Not A Cold, part 2
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
When A Cold Is Not A Cold
Recently a friend of mine told me that her daughter had been sick with a cold for two months.
“That's not a cold,” I told her. “It's an allergy.”
“Ridiculous!” my friend responded. “She doesn't have allergies.”
“If it was a cold,” I went on, “it would have been over and done with in a week, max.”
“Is that why she's not responding to the antibiotics?” my friend asked.
“That's not a cold,” I told her. “It's an allergy.”
“Ridiculous!” my friend responded. “She doesn't have allergies.”
“If it was a cold,” I went on, “it would have been over and done with in a week, max.”
“Is that why she's not responding to the antibiotics?” my friend asked.
Here's two important facts you need to know about colds:
If it's a cold, it is caused by a virus, not a bacteria. Therefore, antibiotics will be useless.
Colds only last about a week. If it lasts longer, it's not a cold.
So how do you tell if it's a cold or an allergy?
First of all, if you have nasal stuffiness, sneezing, or runny nose for longer than a week, start to look at patterns. Do you notice it at a certain time of day? Do you notice that you get a runny nose after eating a particular thing? Is it possible that this happened the last time you ate it?
I had a friend several years ago whose daughter's nose would run every morning after breakfast. She called it “The Breakfast Cold.” Basically, the child was reacting to the food she ate every morning.
Secondly, does your runny nose or sneezing happen at a certain time of year? Do you have what seems to be a month-long cold every March? If so, chances are it's allergies and not a cold. Environmental allergies often mimic colds in their symptoms. The only difference is the duration.
Third, do not underestimate the effect of emotions. If you find yourself in the midst of a month-long cold after the death of a loved one, it's probably your body trying to work out the grief you still feel.
And emotions can be tricky, too! I was treating a patient once for his mold allergies. “My mold allergy is always the strongest in the fall,” he told me. Interesting, I thought; in California, the fall is the dryest time of year, and mold is usually at an all-time low in the fall. I tested him, and found that he wasn't allergic to mold at all. So when I tested again to find out what it was that was triggering his allergy each fall, it turned out to be an emotion...and, long story short, it was in the fall that his father had died several years earlier. After clearing the emotion, his autumn allergy disappeared.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Winter: The Season of the Dreaded Cough
I'll never forget the feeling...being awakened at 11:30 pm, soon after falling asleep, by the sound of my son's cough in his room next to ours...that feeling of dread and fear because my son can't breathe.
Every mother of an asthmatic child knows exactly what I'm talking about. There's a certain sound that every child makes when they cough, when you know they're in trouble. For my son, it was when the cough (which had begun 36 hours previously) had pretty much exhausted his lungs. His voice shrank to a whisper. He began to wheeze. And the cough shook his small frame, sending spasms throughout his entire body, sometimes causing him to gag at the end. I knew there was no medicine that would get us through the night, no matter what the doctor said, and that it would be a long, scary night indeed.
Fortunately for us, I learned from our nutritionist that my son had food allergies that were creating copious amounts of phlegm in his small system. When we eat food that is undigestible—either because we're allergic to that food and it creates inflammation in our gut or because we're sensitive to that food and can't absorb it—the residue of the undigested food produces excess mucus. When we reach a certain critical mass, so to speak, of mucus that our body can't store any longer, the mucus is released as phlegm, usually through the nose, in a form that looks, for all intents and purposes, like a cold. This is what our nutritionist explained to us. Hmm, I thought, that sounds suspiciously like Chinese Medicine, which I myself had studied before having children. And, come to think of it, my son seemed like he was getting an awful lot of colds—sometimes he got a cold every two or three weeks! But, I realized, no one else in the family was getting these “colds,” which made me wonder. Maybe the nutritionist was right.
So we followed the nutritionist's advice: No eggs. No wheat. No cow's milk dairy of any sort, including butter. No soy. And much less sugar. It was a miracle—my son got dramatically better in a very short period of time. I was amazed.
Now, for those of you who have never attempted an egg-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, soy-free diet, let me share with you how incredibly difficult this is to do, especially with children, and especially with someone who is a very picky eater to begin with, like my son is. Basically, you can't go out to eat. Every kid's meal known to mankind is replete with wheat and dairy, not to mention things no parent really wants to know about. Basically, on an egg-free, wheat-free, dairy-free diet, you eat meat, chicken, or fish, and vegetables, which if you're interested in losing weight is a really great diet to follow but unfortunately my son, aged 5 at the time, was already too skinny. And basically, we spent a lot of time at the kitchen table amidst plates of (you guessed it) protein and vegetables, while my son cried and said, “Mom, when can I get off this boring diet?” Breaks a mom's heart.
What kind of a life is this, I ask you? Doomed, at age 5, to eat only meat and vegetables! Ask any parent whose child has had to follow this diet, and they will tell you it is very difficult, but better than pulmicort and albuterol, the asthma medicine du jour. And I seconded that every time we fell off the wagon after a bithday-party soaked weekend, or a visit to the grandparents, or when I gave in because I just couldn't listen to the whining anymore, and the dreaded cough came back. Yes, I sighed, life is a sick joke.
But then we discovered NAET, the greatest allergy elimination therapy known to man, the holy grail of alternative medicine. NAET is a combination of Chinese medicine, applied kinesiology (muscle testing), and chiropractic spinal massage. It actually change your relationship with any substance you might be reacting to. I treated my son for eggs, and the cough went away. Really—I'm not kidding. It resurfaced twice in two years—once after he ate salmon, and once after he ate rice pasta—but after treating him for those two things, he basically doesn't cough anymore. The dreaded cough is gone!!
Every mother of an asthmatic child knows exactly what I'm talking about. There's a certain sound that every child makes when they cough, when you know they're in trouble. For my son, it was when the cough (which had begun 36 hours previously) had pretty much exhausted his lungs. His voice shrank to a whisper. He began to wheeze. And the cough shook his small frame, sending spasms throughout his entire body, sometimes causing him to gag at the end. I knew there was no medicine that would get us through the night, no matter what the doctor said, and that it would be a long, scary night indeed.
Fortunately for us, I learned from our nutritionist that my son had food allergies that were creating copious amounts of phlegm in his small system. When we eat food that is undigestible—either because we're allergic to that food and it creates inflammation in our gut or because we're sensitive to that food and can't absorb it—the residue of the undigested food produces excess mucus. When we reach a certain critical mass, so to speak, of mucus that our body can't store any longer, the mucus is released as phlegm, usually through the nose, in a form that looks, for all intents and purposes, like a cold. This is what our nutritionist explained to us. Hmm, I thought, that sounds suspiciously like Chinese Medicine, which I myself had studied before having children. And, come to think of it, my son seemed like he was getting an awful lot of colds—sometimes he got a cold every two or three weeks! But, I realized, no one else in the family was getting these “colds,” which made me wonder. Maybe the nutritionist was right.
So we followed the nutritionist's advice: No eggs. No wheat. No cow's milk dairy of any sort, including butter. No soy. And much less sugar. It was a miracle—my son got dramatically better in a very short period of time. I was amazed.
Now, for those of you who have never attempted an egg-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, soy-free diet, let me share with you how incredibly difficult this is to do, especially with children, and especially with someone who is a very picky eater to begin with, like my son is. Basically, you can't go out to eat. Every kid's meal known to mankind is replete with wheat and dairy, not to mention things no parent really wants to know about. Basically, on an egg-free, wheat-free, dairy-free diet, you eat meat, chicken, or fish, and vegetables, which if you're interested in losing weight is a really great diet to follow but unfortunately my son, aged 5 at the time, was already too skinny. And basically, we spent a lot of time at the kitchen table amidst plates of (you guessed it) protein and vegetables, while my son cried and said, “Mom, when can I get off this boring diet?” Breaks a mom's heart.
What kind of a life is this, I ask you? Doomed, at age 5, to eat only meat and vegetables! Ask any parent whose child has had to follow this diet, and they will tell you it is very difficult, but better than pulmicort and albuterol, the asthma medicine du jour. And I seconded that every time we fell off the wagon after a bithday-party soaked weekend, or a visit to the grandparents, or when I gave in because I just couldn't listen to the whining anymore, and the dreaded cough came back. Yes, I sighed, life is a sick joke.
But then we discovered NAET, the greatest allergy elimination therapy known to man, the holy grail of alternative medicine. NAET is a combination of Chinese medicine, applied kinesiology (muscle testing), and chiropractic spinal massage. It actually change your relationship with any substance you might be reacting to. I treated my son for eggs, and the cough went away. Really—I'm not kidding. It resurfaced twice in two years—once after he ate salmon, and once after he ate rice pasta—but after treating him for those two things, he basically doesn't cough anymore. The dreaded cough is gone!!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Here Come the Rains
I knew that as soon as I blogged about the dry autumn, it would change! And here come the rains...
The rainy season in Los Angeles is interesting, in that we have a “rainy season.” As opposed to pretty much the whole rest of the country, where it rains pretty much whenever it wants to, Los Angeles stands alone as one of the few places in the United States where there is a long dry season followed by a short wet one in the winter.
For allergy sufferers, this has several implications, depending on your particular allergy. For those suffering from dust allergies, the long dry months are particularly difficult. However, it is the rainy season, with its accompanying dampness, that affects those suffering from mold.
The rainy season in Los Angeles is interesting, in that we have a “rainy season.” As opposed to pretty much the whole rest of the country, where it rains pretty much whenever it wants to, Los Angeles stands alone as one of the few places in the United States where there is a long dry season followed by a short wet one in the winter.
For allergy sufferers, this has several implications, depending on your particular allergy. For those suffering from dust allergies, the long dry months are particularly difficult. However, it is the rainy season, with its accompanying dampness, that affects those suffering from mold.
If you'll notice the Local Pollen Count, it's not even raining. And yet the mold levels have begun to rise in comparison to where they were last week.
Mold is an interesting thing. Brought on by the dampness of a rainy day, the next day's breeze blows it all over the place. Since our homes and offices are fairly airtight, mold blows in when we open the door, and sets up residence.
So what's so bad about mold? Well, nothing—if you're not sensitive to it. On the other hand, inhaling mold spores can cause coughing and allergic asthma to those who are sensitive to it.
What can you do about mold? Pretty much the ONLY thing you can do about mold—aside from clearing your allergy to it—is to keep humidity levels low. You can obtain a dehumidifier (not common in LA but de rigueur in Houston, Texas, where mold grows on the backs of couches and inside pianos in damp houses). And you can be happy that it's only a short season that will end soon...
So what's so bad about mold? Well, nothing—if you're not sensitive to it. On the other hand, inhaling mold spores can cause coughing and allergic asthma to those who are sensitive to it.
What can you do about mold? Pretty much the ONLY thing you can do about mold—aside from clearing your allergy to it—is to keep humidity levels low. You can obtain a dehumidifier (not common in LA but de rigueur in Houston, Texas, where mold grows on the backs of couches and inside pianos in damp houses). And you can be happy that it's only a short season that will end soon...
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Fall, the Perfect Season to Clear Pollen Allergies
Autumn in Los Angeles is a great time to eliminate pollen allergies, especially when it's a warm, dry autumn like we've been experiencing this year.
If you look on the right side of this blog post, you'll notice the Local Pollen Count. It's always easier to clear an allergy that you can avoid, and today, most of the pollens and mold are very low.
This means that if you were to come for a treatment for mold or grass pollen, you probably wouldn't even have to wear a mask for that day.
The key in allergy elimination, as practiced in NAET, is avoidance. For the 25 hours after the treatment, it is crucial that you avoid the allergen to the best of your abilities. This gives your body a chance to detox each organ from the substance. If you are not able to avoid the substance you're clearing—either because it's in the air, always touching you, or within your own body—you can always simply massage your gate points every two hours to get you through the 25-hour avoidance period following the treatment.
And when you clear your pollen and mold allergies this fall, you'll be glad you did when winter and spring roll around...and you'll be the only one NOT sneezing!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The 25-Hour Avoidance in NAET
After each NAET treatment, you must avoid the allergen treated for the following 25 hours.
Why is this necessary? Why 25 hours? After all, didn't the practitioner just test and determine that I passed the treatment?
To answer to these questions, I must first explain about the Chinese Circadian Clock.
In Chinese Medicine, each internal organ, and its corresponding meridian system, is most active at a particular 2-hour period of time each day. This means that the organ's energy is at its highest during this time period. For instance, the time period of 3-5 am is devoted to the Lungs. 5-7 pm is Kidney time. 1-3 am is Liver time.
Here's a list of each internal organ and its corresponding 2-hour time:
Lung: 3-5am
Large Intestine: 5-7am
Stomach: 7-9am
Spleen: 9-11am
Heart: 11am-1pm
Small Intestine: 1-3pm
Urinary Bladder: 3-5pm
Kidney: 5-7pm
Pericardium: 7-9pm
Triple Burner: 9-11pm
Gall Bladder: 11pm-1am
Liver: 1-3am
The Circadian Clock has many applications in Chinese Medicine, which we won't go into right now. But in NAET, the Clock explains why we need to avoid allergens for 25 hours.
Imagine, for a moment, that you have just had an NAET treatment, and let's say we just treated you for pickles because although you love them, they give you terrible gas. And let's say that your appointment was at 3pm, which means that we actually treated you at about 3:10pm. You walked out of the office at 3:50pm.
3-5pm is Urinary Bladder time, and as such, your bladder was wide awake at the time of the treatment. It's as if your bladder said, “Hey, I got it. I now have a new relationship with pickles.”
However, your Kidneys were not experiencing maximum Qi and blood flow at the time of the treatment, and as such, were they to come into contact with pickles during their 2-hour time period, they may not be able to “hold” the treatment. On the other hand, if you were to completely avoid pickles from 5-7pm when your kidneys were experiencing maximum Qi and blood flow, your kidneys would be able to maintain their new relationship with pickles.
Of course, if you were to repeat your treatment every two hours, you could eat all the pickles you wanted. But then NAET would be very expensive, and nobody would do it...so it's better to just avoid the allergen for 25 hours. Because anybody can do anything for just one day, right?
Monday, November 17, 2008
How Allergy Elimination Works
Allergy Elimination is real and it works. There are several ways you can do it. Today, I'll be talking about Allergy Elimination as it is done in NAET. NAET is a powerful way to eliminate your allergies to virtually anything. Check it out at www.naet.com, or my website, www.alternativeallergysolutions.com.
In NAET, allergy elimination works by stimulating the spinal nerves. The spinal nerves communicate information from the brain to the internal organs and back to the brain again. When we stimulate these nerves while holding an allergen in our hand, or by maintaining skin-to-skin contact with someone holding an allergen, it changes our relationship with that allergen from a negative to a positive one.
Now I know this is a big mouthful to swallow, and here I'd like to interject the premise that this is NOT Western Medicine by any stretch of the imagination. This is energy medicine, and as such, it cannot be understood through western or scientific means.
When we stimulate the spinal nerves through a vigorous massage, coupled with breathing techniques, what is happening is that we are interrupting the normal flow of information via the nervous system. If you think of the brain as the body's computer, we are basically pressing the “reset” button.
Think of two magnets. If you line them up end-to-end, with the positive and negative poles together, the two magnets attract. If you take the second magnet and flip it around so that the two positive (or two negative) poles are together, they repel each other.
The same thing happens to us with things we're allergic to. It's like we're the first magnet and the allergen is the second magnet. If we have a harmonious relationship with an item, the magnets are lined up +-+-, and the two magnets attract. If it is a disharmonious relationship, the magnets are lined up +--+, and they repel each other.
In NAET, when we stimulate the spinal nerves, the second magnet gets flipped around so that the magnets attract and the relationship changes from a disharmonious one to a harmonious one.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Fires in SoCal
There is a reason that I have included the Local Pollen Count on my blog page. Please take a moment to notice that today, under the heading “Air Quality” it says “Unhealthy for Sensitive People,” and under “Primary Pollutant” it says “Particulate matter.”
Attention, Southern California: we have a state of emergency. Please stay in your homes with windows and doors shut.
It may seem pretty obvious, and you may wonder, why is she going on about this? But I would really like to make a solid point here.
If this fire was a simple brush fire, in which trees, grass, and shrubs were burning, I would probably not make such a big deal about it. However, what is burning today are houses. House fires are much more dangerous to all of us, especially those of us with compromised immune systems, because of the toxic content of the smoke.
Houses are constructed to last. There's insulation made of fiberglass, cellulite, vermiculite, polystyrene, and polyurethane. Think burning plastic. There's arsenic-treated 2 X 4's,which frame pretty much each and every house in Southern California. There's sheetrock, which is made of gypsum, fiberglass, plasticizer, potash (a highly toxic and reactive chemical), and EDTA (made from formaldehyde and cyanide). On the sheetrock is housepaint, containing more toxic chemicals. There's carpeting, containing natural and synthetic fibers, including polypropylene, nylon, and other versions of plastic. Then there's siding, which is usually either stucco, a mixture of cement and plaster, or siding, which is usually made of synthetic materials. Of course, the newest siding is insulated, and contains polystyrene foam. And then there's shingles, which are either concrete or plastic, waterproofed red clay, or asphalt, made of fiberglass. And then there's all the stuff that's IN your house...at least half of which is made of plastic.
Can you imagine what we are breathing when we go outside today? It's not just ash from burning trees. It's ash from burning plastic. You might as well light up and smoke a carton of cigarettes.
So the best thing to do today, especially if you have children, or if your immune system is compromised for any reason, is to hop on an airplane and fly up to rural Oregon. Failing that, please stay inside, drink plenty of water, and keep your doors and windows closed until the skies clear, which should be sometime in the next 3 days. And let's all send good energy to our planet—the environmental impact of this catastrophe will probably be felt for a long time.
The Allergic Continuum
When most people think of allergies, they think of the classic definition, the hypersensitivity reaction. This type of allergy is the kind that shows up in a blood or scratch test at your local MD allergist's office. The blood test or scratch test reveals the presence of IgE, and in some cases, IgG in the body, and determines, in hard scientific fact, that you do indeed have an allergy.
However, this is a very narrow definition of allergies. In fact, hypersensitivity reactions of this sort are only one of five types, the rest referring to autoimmune disorders. Furthermore, the classic and narrow definition of allergies as hypersensitivity reactions don't always answer our questions as to why things make us sick. I'm sure you know people who have had reactions that look like “allergies,” and yet when they go to the allergist and get tested, the results are negative. Or the results are very specific and don't account for all their symptoms. For example, the test may show an allergy to milk and cats, but nothing else. Yet when they eat nightshade vegetables they get bloated and have indigestion. According to the test they are not allergic to potatoes, peppers, or tomatoes.
What's going on here?
The hypersensitivity definition of allergies, as I said before, is a very narrow definition of an allergy. There is a continuum of allergies. On the “weak” end, we have sensitivities: things we are sensitive to, that cause symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, indigestion, gas, body aches, and diarrhea. Since this is not a hypersensitivity reaction, there are no antibodies to the substance, although inflammation, heat, or other symptoms may occur. In the middle of the spectrum are intolerances, things we naturally avoid because they make us feel uncomfortable enough that we have identified them as an inhospitable guest in our system. Intolerances include things that make us sick: seafood that causes vomiting; grass that causes itching; milk that causes painful bloating and constipation. On the “severe” end of the spectrum we find allergies in the classic definition: things to which our body has produced antibodies after our first exposure, and which produce in us moderately serious reactions (swelling, hives, itching, etc). And at the end of the “severe” end is anaphylaxis. Exposure to these items, which our body has identified as severely dangerous, can produce life-threatening reactions or death. These are your peanut, milk, egg, and wheat anaphylaxes.
Just because your MD doctor has tested you by scratch or blood test and has found that you have a specific number of “allergies,” don't assume that's the end of the story. Pay attention to how you feel—after a big meal, after eating sweets, after consuming alcoholic beverages, after exposure to chemicals. Notice when you feel a certain way after being exposed to something...and notice when these reactions happen REPEATEDLY. Does that morning smoothie leave you feeling exhausted and lightheaded? Do you get really bloated after that afternoon Diet Coke...and then absolutely have to have another one? Do your eyes tear incessantly after taking the Tylenol you popped in order to take care of that headache you got after cleaning your bathtub with Comet? Being in tune with your body and what it can—and can't—handle can help keep you in control of your own life.
However, this is a very narrow definition of allergies. In fact, hypersensitivity reactions of this sort are only one of five types, the rest referring to autoimmune disorders. Furthermore, the classic and narrow definition of allergies as hypersensitivity reactions don't always answer our questions as to why things make us sick. I'm sure you know people who have had reactions that look like “allergies,” and yet when they go to the allergist and get tested, the results are negative. Or the results are very specific and don't account for all their symptoms. For example, the test may show an allergy to milk and cats, but nothing else. Yet when they eat nightshade vegetables they get bloated and have indigestion. According to the test they are not allergic to potatoes, peppers, or tomatoes.
What's going on here?
The hypersensitivity definition of allergies, as I said before, is a very narrow definition of an allergy. There is a continuum of allergies. On the “weak” end, we have sensitivities: things we are sensitive to, that cause symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, indigestion, gas, body aches, and diarrhea. Since this is not a hypersensitivity reaction, there are no antibodies to the substance, although inflammation, heat, or other symptoms may occur. In the middle of the spectrum are intolerances, things we naturally avoid because they make us feel uncomfortable enough that we have identified them as an inhospitable guest in our system. Intolerances include things that make us sick: seafood that causes vomiting; grass that causes itching; milk that causes painful bloating and constipation. On the “severe” end of the spectrum we find allergies in the classic definition: things to which our body has produced antibodies after our first exposure, and which produce in us moderately serious reactions (swelling, hives, itching, etc). And at the end of the “severe” end is anaphylaxis. Exposure to these items, which our body has identified as severely dangerous, can produce life-threatening reactions or death. These are your peanut, milk, egg, and wheat anaphylaxes.
Just because your MD doctor has tested you by scratch or blood test and has found that you have a specific number of “allergies,” don't assume that's the end of the story. Pay attention to how you feel—after a big meal, after eating sweets, after consuming alcoholic beverages, after exposure to chemicals. Notice when you feel a certain way after being exposed to something...and notice when these reactions happen REPEATEDLY. Does that morning smoothie leave you feeling exhausted and lightheaded? Do you get really bloated after that afternoon Diet Coke...and then absolutely have to have another one? Do your eyes tear incessantly after taking the Tylenol you popped in order to take care of that headache you got after cleaning your bathtub with Comet? Being in tune with your body and what it can—and can't—handle can help keep you in control of your own life.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Allergies Defined
What are allergies, and how do we get them? Why do some people have them, and others don't?
The technical definition of an allergy is a hypersensitivity reaction, which is exactly what it sounds like. At the time of our first exposure to something that our body identifies as harmful to us, an immune cell called a T(H)2 Lymphocyte interacts with another kind of lymphocyte called a B Cell to produce IgE, which is a type of antibody. The antibody binds to a receptor site. This sets the scene for the subsequent exposure. At our next exposure to the allergen, when the antibody is present at the receptor site, histamines are released, causing the classic allergic reaction: inflammation (swelling) and heat (usually in the form of redness, rash, itching, or warmth in the affected area). This reaction happens because we have become hypersensitive to the allergen.
What about people who have allergies at a very young age? Some people are born with allergies, having inheritied them from their parents. Children of allergy sufferers are often allergy sufferers themselves. Other children seem to "grow out" of their allergies at around 8 or 9 years of age. Actually, hormones mask the symptoms of allergies. These same individuals will probably see a resurgence of their allergies in their 50s or 60s as their hormones wane.
We can also aquire allergies. Allergies are aquired through several mechanisms. When our immune system is compromised--by disease, by stress, by a combination of factors--our body may mistakenly identify a harmless item as harmful. This is why mothers (having undergone a change in their immune system so their body won't reject the fetus, and the subsequent stress of childbirth) often report a newfound inability to digest gluten, the protein in wheat, or dairy products. Similarly, a man who lost his job, got divorced, and endured the tragic loss of his father to a car accident, might suddenly become chemically sensitive. An exposure to toxic chemicals during childhood--carpet cleaning agents, or immunizations, for example--can spawn further allergies to other substances, such as foods or environmental factors.
These are just a few examples of how people become sensitive, intolerant, or allergic. The immune system is a complex and multidimensional aspect of our body, and we are just starting to understand the intricacies of how it works.
So why do some people have allergies and others don't? Some people have great genes. Others have two parents with lots of allergies from whom they inherited their own sensitivities. Some people have little stress in their lives, or have adapted to stress in a positive way. We are all different and unique, which is why, although there are common allergies, anyone can be allergic to anything. It's all about polarity. Either we have a positive relationship with something or a negative one. The most important aspect of ourselves is our own awareness of our limitations and our adaptability.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Mercury Spills from Broken Light Bulbs
This morning, as they were chasing each other through the house, my cats knocked over a lamp and broke the CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb). As you might know, CFLs contain mercury which can be toxic to everyone. I shooed my kids out of the living room and swept up the broken glass, and then looked it up online, where I found that you're not supposed to use a broom, but rather two pieces of cardboard (so as not to contaminate your broom). According to one website, there are several places where you can dispose of the broken lightbulb; unfortunately the nearest one to me was in Santa Rosa, CA (in the Bay Area). Another website assured me that after I deposited the broken light bulb in a sealed plastic bag, it was fine to throw it away in my local dumpster, but I should definitely air out my house for 15 minutes.
But the more I searched online, the more concerned I became. I found an article on PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3575038) describing a 23-month-old suffering from severe mercury poisoning after playing in a spot where 8 fluorescent bulbs had broken. Mercury affects the brain, kidneys, and lungs, and can cause peripheral neuropathy, edema, and lupus. Oh, hey, and how about the thimerosal/autism link...
In a quandary, I began to muscle test. What absorbs mercury? How can I clear it out of my house? Is it okay for me to be here? How long should I be away? Do I need treatment? (especially after I removed a piece of broken lightbulb from the ball of my foot...)
Here's what I came up with:
You can sprinkle rice or epsom salts over the area to absorb the transient mercury in the area. Definitely allow ventilation to the room. Burning some candles in the room can help too. Leave the house for at least 5 hours.
But the more I searched online, the more concerned I became. I found an article on PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3575038) describing a 23-month-old suffering from severe mercury poisoning after playing in a spot where 8 fluorescent bulbs had broken. Mercury affects the brain, kidneys, and lungs, and can cause peripheral neuropathy, edema, and lupus. Oh, hey, and how about the thimerosal/autism link...
In a quandary, I began to muscle test. What absorbs mercury? How can I clear it out of my house? Is it okay for me to be here? How long should I be away? Do I need treatment? (especially after I removed a piece of broken lightbulb from the ball of my foot...)
Here's what I came up with:
You can sprinkle rice or epsom salts over the area to absorb the transient mercury in the area. Definitely allow ventilation to the room. Burning some candles in the room can help too. Leave the house for at least 5 hours.
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