The source and solution to allergies
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The source and solution to allergies

Mar 15, 2018 | Yael Tusk, M.Sc.

My husband’s grandfather used to say, “What’s with all these ‘allergies’? In my day, there were people who were sensitive to wool… or leather… but nothing like today.”

My husband’s grandfather used to say, “What’s with all these ‘allergies’? In my day, there were people who were sensitive to wool… or leather… but nothing like today.”
Half a century ago, food allergies were virtually unheard of. Occasionally you’d find someone with sensitivities to certain foods (such as strawberries), but it was a rarity.
If there was one child in a class who was allergic to something, it was a conversation piece.

Some might scoff at this Zeidy (Grandpa), and say that he was just ignorant. That in his day nobody knew how to diagnose things like allergies, but since then, science and education have advanced, so we are picking up on problems that used to be mysterious and nameless. I would tend to disagree. If the problem existed in those days, people would have picked up on it. In reality, I believe that it is not the diagnostics that are cutting edge, but the diseases. (Yes many diagnostic tests are new, but they were created to accommodate the changing health profile of society- they are a reflection of the change, not the source of our awareness.)

Today, allergies have become the rule, not the exception. What has changed in recent years that has so dramatically altered our reaction to food?

Furthermore, food allergies do not occur equally throughout the world. They are far less common in third world countries, especially those with little western medical care. In the U.S., food allergies have doubled during the past ten years alone. What has changed during this time? 1
 

Obvious changes

During the last few decades, society has become increasingly interested in health foods. What has led to this new fad? The truth is that the need for health food stems from the unhealthy direction that the current food market has taken. Traditionally, crops were unadulterated and free of harmful chemicals, and synthetic factory-made ingredients. There was no need for a separate section in the supermarket. Today, genetically modified, processed, packaged, nutritionally stripped foods make up the bulk of our diet. In contrast, go back a few generations, and you will find that all that was available was locally grown fresh organic produce.

 

Cows were not fed corn, nor their dead diseased counterparts, (cows grazed and ate their natural diet of grass, shrubs, leaves etc.). Neither were they subjected to hormones and antibiotics like they are today. Tomatoes were not altered with fish DNA so that they can survive frigid weather. Not so long ago, toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers were unheard of.

Traditionally, wheat was the staple grain in many societies. Today however, it has become the culprit for many ailments, from wheat allergies to celiac disease (a debilitating autoimmune condition where the body cannot tolerate gluten). In light of wheat bread’s historic role as the essential dietary element, why are so many allergic to it today?

It is precisely because of wheat’s popularity that is has become allergenic. There are few crops in the world that have been altered as much as wheat, to improve productivity and profitability. It has been genetically modified to survive extreme temperature changes. It has also been modified to greatly increase the amount of gluten it contains (see celiac disease above). The wheat that we eat today is so far removed from its origins, that it’s no wonder it is making so many people sick!
 

Insidious changes

Aside from the nature of food, it appears that the nature of the human body has changed as well. Allergies are explained as a misdirected immune response, where the food is being treated as a foreign disease-causing agent, and the body reacts to it in much the same way that it would to a foreign microorganism.

 

What has caused our immune system to react to food as if it were a disease?

Now that we understand the possibility of strange genetic material (as well as chemicals and additives being part of most foods today), immune response to food makes sense: our bodies don’t like the food we are ingesting.

There is another possibility as well.

Around 1913, experiments were conducted where casein (a milk protein) or egg lecithin were emulsified with various vegetable oils (corn, cottonseed, castor and more). When injected, these various formulations were known to induce anaphylaxis, (a potentially deadly allergic response) and also to trigger future sensitivity to these products.

The vitamin K shot given at birth contains castor seed oil (a legume similar to peanut) and the Hep B shot contains casein (from milk). Soy allergies began appearing in infants at three months, which was the age that babies began receiving the pneumococcal vaccine, which contains soy peptone. The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine contained chick embryo, and sparked an ever rising trend in egg allergies.2

The above food items are not the only victims. Barbara Feick Gregory, a vaccine researcher, was surprised to discover that for nearly every food allergy that exists today, “that food was listed as an ingredient in a vaccine adjuvant or culture medium.” The incidence of allergies in vaccinated children is more than double that of unvaccinated.

So why might food in vaccines cause allergies? Vaccines are injected with the intention of causing an immune response. Aside from the disease entity, other (non health promoting) substances are added to increase the body’s immune response; because of this, the body may recognize other ingredients in the injection, not only the disease, as an antigen (a foreign substance that the body must fight). This can reprogram the immune system to indefinitely respond to certain foods as if they were diseases.

After penicillin was introduced, there was a strange phenomenon where many people developed often fatal anaphylaxis and dangerous allergic responses to ingredients in the medication. What most people are not aware of is why penicillin triggered this reaction: in order to boost potency, penicillin given via injection rather than orally. Further, peanut oil was added to the penicillin injections to slow absorption of the drug and make a dose last longer in the body. If penicillin was only ever given orally, allergic or anaphylactic reactions to the drug would probably never have occurred.

Anything taken by mouth will be processed through the digestive system, allowing only certain components to reach the bloodstream. Injection bypasses the body’s digestive infrastructure and introduces foreign proteins directly into the bloodstream. When the body recognizes these allergenic proteins as foreign, it is not due to an immunological malfunction at all. It is a predictable immune-response to a foreign substance (antigen) that has been unnaturally and forcibly introduced to the bloodstream, where it does not belong. It is not specifically vaccination or antibiotics that cause allergies or anaphylaxis, it is the hypodermic needle and the injection of foreign proteins directly into the bloodstream which triggers a predictable, but unwanted immune response.

Since allergies are a learned or programmed immune response to specific antigenic components in certain foods, they can be very difficult to reverse. I will however give a few tips to help mitigate or possibly even eliminate allergies. At the very least, some of these tips may help you to detect sensitivities.

  • If you discover that you are allergic to a certain food, even if the allergy creates more subtle symptoms like stomach discomfort or lethargy, try eliminating the trigger food from your diet for at least a year. During this time, your body may actually heal, as gut inflammation improves and the immune reaction may completely vanish. Therefore,
  • If the reaction was never life threatening, but more of a mild discomfort, you can attempt to slowly and cautiously reintroduce the food while observing for reactions (if you miss the food terribly.)
  • Consider trying a GAPS diet, which includes a lot of healing bone broths and natural food-based probiotics. This must be done in the absence of trigger foods. 3
  • Test your reaction to more whole versions of the trigger foods. I.e. if you have a problem with wheat, you may still find that organic sprouted wheat does not give you trouble, or that grass-fed unhomogenized dairy is better than the conventional products. You can try these foods at the beginning of an elimination diet. If you see no improvement in allergy symptoms, avoid the more natural versions of trigger foods as well.
  • To test for an allergic response, you can try swiping the food (wet) on your wrist and leaving it overnight. If there is redness in the area, you are having an inflammatory reaction to that food.

Leaky gut syndrome is known as a state in which the intestines are inflamed and therefore allowing improperly digested food or waste products to pass unhindered into the blood stream, resulting in inflammation in other bodily systems as well.

Although leaky gut is a hypothetical construct (as far as I can tell), the concept of a gut disorder causing widespread systemic havoc in the body is well-recognized in Chinese Medicine. This is particularly true in pediatrics, where some say that most conditions are rooted in the (lack of) health of the digestive tract. This is something that I have seen in action many times.

Simple Bone Broth Recipe

  • Buy chicken necks, turkey necks, or other poultry or cow bones including marrow bones. (Alternatively, fish bones may be used.) Use any combination of animal bones- the more the better.
  • Place the bones in a large pot, and add enough water to cover the bones generously.
  • Add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (which will leach the minerals out of the bones)
  • Some let the combination sit for one hour (I don’t)
  • Bring to a boil then lower to a simmer, checking intermittently and adding water as needed. Cook covered.
  • Optional: skim the foam off the top (I don’t bother with this, since I filter all the scum out at the end anyway using a large mesh spoon.)
  • Simmer on low for 24 to 72 hours (again, these are the official instructions- I often cook bone broth for less than 24 hours when I have a time constraint or deadline. The cooking time is flexible.
  • Remove the bones and add salt a pepper to taste. (Don’t be stingy with the salt, just use a good healthy unrefined salt.)
  • Vegetables- some recipes advise adding the vegetables before the long cooking stretch and then discarding everything except the liquid. I think that this is unnecessary and wasteful. Instead, I recommend that after the one to three day bone-cooking period, remove the bones and then add your choice of vegetable and cook to your liking (about 2 to 6 hours).

Suggested vegetable ideas (use any combination): Carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, onions (chopped or whole), kohlrabi, parsnip, celery (root, leaves, or stalks), parsley, dill and more.

I do know people who have meticulously avoided trigger foods for one year or more and were eventually able to reintroduce foods into their diets without experiencing allergic reactions, however there are no guarantees.
 

Seasonal Allergies

Allergies come in two very different forms. We discussed food allergies above, but seasonal allergies or “hay fever” are also widespread. Some common symptoms include itchy, sore or red eyes, sneezing, runny or stuffed nose, and exhaustion. Many view this as an overzealous immune reaction, where the body recognizes safe substances (i.e. pollen, dander, hay…) as foreign.

 

Antihistamines are often prescribed in order to dull the body’s overreaction. While these drugs often help reduce allergy symptoms, they have no effect on the long term condition, and individuals will continue to suffer year after year. In other words, antihistamines can only provide temporary symptom relief. There is also a major flaw in the objective of this medication, which will help us understand why they are incapable of bringing about a cure.

The patients that I see who suffer from seasonal allergies do not appear to have strong immune systems at all. In fact, their defenses are so low that these individuals are often the sorts who catch every bug that comes their way. From a holistic perspective, it is a weakness in the body’s defenses that truly causes these people to suffer through allergy season. Suppressing the immune system is really quite counter-productive if one has any hope of ridding themselves of their allergies.

So why do these individuals suffer more in the spring (or fall)? The change of seasons is when our defenses must work their hardest, since our temperature regulatory system must acclimate to sudden environmental changes. Those of us who suffer most, are those whose bodies have some trouble adjusting to climate changes quickly.

So although, on a molecular level, allergy sufferers may seem to be overreacting to pollen etc. in truth, they usually have an extremely weak immune system. The ultimate proof of this is that these individuals get better with treatments that strengthen their immune system. If this was really a pure overreaction, then strengthening the immunity should cause their allergies to get worse (which does not happen).

When an individual comes to me at the peak of allergy season, the goal of treatment is to allay their symptoms. We do so in much the same way that we would when treating someone who is suffering from a cold or flu. However, the goal is never to suppress the immune reaction. Rather, we strengthen the immune system so that it is able to eliminate pathogens.

This works much better for colds than it does for chronic allergies. This is because when patients are suffering from an acute attack of a chronic condition, we must treat the acute symptoms before we can address the underlying condition. Every condition has layers. In order to treat the innermost layers and bring about a cure, you must first eliminate the external layers, i.e. the acute symptoms, only then can you deal with the underlying systemic imbalance.


 

Heather Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, 2011

Ibid.

Natasha Campbell McBride, MD, Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D...., 2004

About the author

The source and solution to allergies - TK Health Club
The source and solution to allergies
Prev post
Next post

The source and solution to allergies

Mar 15, 2018 | Yael Tusk, M.Sc.

My husband’s grandfather used to say, “What’s with all these ‘allergies’? In my day, there were people who were sensitive to wool… or leather… but nothing like today.”

My husband’s grandfather used to say, “What’s with all these ‘allergies’? In my day, there were people who were sensitive to wool… or leather… but nothing like today.”
Half a century ago, food allergies were virtually unheard of. Occasionally you’d find someone with sensitivities to certain foods (such as strawberries), but it was a rarity.
If there was one child in a class who was allergic to something, it was a conversation piece.

Some might scoff at this Zeidy (Grandpa), and say that he was just ignorant. That in his day nobody knew how to diagnose things like allergies, but since then, science and education have advanced, so we are picking up on problems that used to be mysterious and nameless. I would tend to disagree. If the problem existed in those days, people would have picked up on it. In reality, I believe that it is not the diagnostics that are cutting edge, but the diseases. (Yes many diagnostic tests are new, but they were created to accommodate the changing health profile of society- they are a reflection of the change, not the source of our awareness.)

Today, allergies have become the rule, not the exception. What has changed in recent years that has so dramatically altered our reaction to food?

Furthermore, food allergies do not occur equally throughout the world. They are far less common in third world countries, especially those with little western medical care. In the U.S., food allergies have doubled during the past ten years alone. What has changed during this time? 1
 

Obvious changes

During the last few decades, society has become increasingly interested in health foods. What has led to this new fad? The truth is that the need for health food stems from the unhealthy direction that the current food market has taken. Traditionally, crops were unadulterated and free of harmful chemicals, and synthetic factory-made ingredients. There was no need for a separate section in the supermarket. Today, genetically modified, processed, packaged, nutritionally stripped foods make up the bulk of our diet. In contrast, go back a few generations, and you will find that all that was available was locally grown fresh organic produce.

 

Cows were not fed corn, nor their dead diseased counterparts, (cows grazed and ate their natural diet of grass, shrubs, leaves etc.). Neither were they subjected to hormones and antibiotics like they are today. Tomatoes were not altered with fish DNA so that they can survive frigid weather. Not so long ago, toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers were unheard of.

Traditionally, wheat was the staple grain in many societies. Today however, it has become the culprit for many ailments, from wheat allergies to celiac disease (a debilitating autoimmune condition where the body cannot tolerate gluten). In light of wheat bread’s historic role as the essential dietary element, why are so many allergic to it today?

It is precisely because of wheat’s popularity that is has become allergenic. There are few crops in the world that have been altered as much as wheat, to improve productivity and profitability. It has been genetically modified to survive extreme temperature changes. It has also been modified to greatly increase the amount of gluten it contains (see celiac disease above). The wheat that we eat today is so far removed from its origins, that it’s no wonder it is making so many people sick!
 

Insidious changes

Aside from the nature of food, it appears that the nature of the human body has changed as well. Allergies are explained as a misdirected immune response, where the food is being treated as a foreign disease-causing agent, and the body reacts to it in much the same way that it would to a foreign microorganism.

 

What has caused our immune system to react to food as if it were a disease?

Now that we understand the possibility of strange genetic material (as well as chemicals and additives being part of most foods today), immune response to food makes sense: our bodies don’t like the food we are ingesting.

There is another possibility as well.

Around 1913, experiments were conducted where casein (a milk protein) or egg lecithin were emulsified with various vegetable oils (corn, cottonseed, castor and more). When injected, these various formulations were known to induce anaphylaxis, (a potentially deadly allergic response) and also to trigger future sensitivity to these products.

The vitamin K shot given at birth contains castor seed oil (a legume similar to peanut) and the Hep B shot contains casein (from milk). Soy allergies began appearing in infants at three months, which was the age that babies began receiving the pneumococcal vaccine, which contains soy peptone. The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine contained chick embryo, and sparked an ever rising trend in egg allergies.2

The above food items are not the only victims. Barbara Feick Gregory, a vaccine researcher, was surprised to discover that for nearly every food allergy that exists today, “that food was listed as an ingredient in a vaccine adjuvant or culture medium.” The incidence of allergies in vaccinated children is more than double that of unvaccinated.

So why might food in vaccines cause allergies? Vaccines are injected with the intention of causing an immune response. Aside from the disease entity, other (non health promoting) substances are added to increase the body’s immune response; because of this, the body may recognize other ingredients in the injection, not only the disease, as an antigen (a foreign substance that the body must fight). This can reprogram the immune system to indefinitely respond to certain foods as if they were diseases.

After penicillin was introduced, there was a strange phenomenon where many people developed often fatal anaphylaxis and dangerous allergic responses to ingredients in the medication. What most people are not aware of is why penicillin triggered this reaction: in order to boost potency, penicillin given via injection rather than orally. Further, peanut oil was added to the penicillin injections to slow absorption of the drug and make a dose last longer in the body. If penicillin was only ever given orally, allergic or anaphylactic reactions to the drug would probably never have occurred.

Anything taken by mouth will be processed through the digestive system, allowing only certain components to reach the bloodstream. Injection bypasses the body’s digestive infrastructure and introduces foreign proteins directly into the bloodstream. When the body recognizes these allergenic proteins as foreign, it is not due to an immunological malfunction at all. It is a predictable immune-response to a foreign substance (antigen) that has been unnaturally and forcibly introduced to the bloodstream, where it does not belong. It is not specifically vaccination or antibiotics that cause allergies or anaphylaxis, it is the hypodermic needle and the injection of foreign proteins directly into the bloodstream which triggers a predictable, but unwanted immune response.

Since allergies are a learned or programmed immune response to specific antigenic components in certain foods, they can be very difficult to reverse. I will however give a few tips to help mitigate or possibly even eliminate allergies. At the very least, some of these tips may help you to detect sensitivities.

  • If you discover that you are allergic to a certain food, even if the allergy creates more subtle symptoms like stomach discomfort or lethargy, try eliminating the trigger food from your diet for at least a year. During this time, your body may actually heal, as gut inflammation improves and the immune reaction may completely vanish. Therefore,
  • If the reaction was never life threatening, but more of a mild discomfort, you can attempt to slowly and cautiously reintroduce the food while observing for reactions (if you miss the food terribly.)
  • Consider trying a GAPS diet, which includes a lot of healing bone broths and natural food-based probiotics. This must be done in the absence of trigger foods. 3
  • Test your reaction to more whole versions of the trigger foods. I.e. if you have a problem with wheat, you may still find that organic sprouted wheat does not give you trouble, or that grass-fed unhomogenized dairy is better than the conventional products. You can try these foods at the beginning of an elimination diet. If you see no improvement in allergy symptoms, avoid the more natural versions of trigger foods as well.
  • To test for an allergic response, you can try swiping the food (wet) on your wrist and leaving it overnight. If there is redness in the area, you are having an inflammatory reaction to that food.

Leaky gut syndrome is known as a state in which the intestines are inflamed and therefore allowing improperly digested food or waste products to pass unhindered into the blood stream, resulting in inflammation in other bodily systems as well.

Although leaky gut is a hypothetical construct (as far as I can tell), the concept of a gut disorder causing widespread systemic havoc in the body is well-recognized in Chinese Medicine. This is particularly true in pediatrics, where some say that most conditions are rooted in the (lack of) health of the digestive tract. This is something that I have seen in action many times.

Simple Bone Broth Recipe

  • Buy chicken necks, turkey necks, or other poultry or cow bones including marrow bones. (Alternatively, fish bones may be used.) Use any combination of animal bones- the more the better.
  • Place the bones in a large pot, and add enough water to cover the bones generously.
  • Add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (which will leach the minerals out of the bones)
  • Some let the combination sit for one hour (I don’t)
  • Bring to a boil then lower to a simmer, checking intermittently and adding water as needed. Cook covered.
  • Optional: skim the foam off the top (I don’t bother with this, since I filter all the scum out at the end anyway using a large mesh spoon.)
  • Simmer on low for 24 to 72 hours (again, these are the official instructions- I often cook bone broth for less than 24 hours when I have a time constraint or deadline. The cooking time is flexible.
  • Remove the bones and add salt a pepper to taste. (Don’t be stingy with the salt, just use a good healthy unrefined salt.)
  • Vegetables- some recipes advise adding the vegetables before the long cooking stretch and then discarding everything except the liquid. I think that this is unnecessary and wasteful. Instead, I recommend that after the one to three day bone-cooking period, remove the bones and then add your choice of vegetable and cook to your liking (about 2 to 6 hours).

Suggested vegetable ideas (use any combination): Carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, onions (chopped or whole), kohlrabi, parsnip, celery (root, leaves, or stalks), parsley, dill and more.

I do know people who have meticulously avoided trigger foods for one year or more and were eventually able to reintroduce foods into their diets without experiencing allergic reactions, however there are no guarantees.
 

Seasonal Allergies

Allergies come in two very different forms. We discussed food allergies above, but seasonal allergies or “hay fever” are also widespread. Some common symptoms include itchy, sore or red eyes, sneezing, runny or stuffed nose, and exhaustion. Many view this as an overzealous immune reaction, where the body recognizes safe substances (i.e. pollen, dander, hay…) as foreign.

 

Antihistamines are often prescribed in order to dull the body’s overreaction. While these drugs often help reduce allergy symptoms, they have no effect on the long term condition, and individuals will continue to suffer year after year. In other words, antihistamines can only provide temporary symptom relief. There is also a major flaw in the objective of this medication, which will help us understand why they are incapable of bringing about a cure.

The patients that I see who suffer from seasonal allergies do not appear to have strong immune systems at all. In fact, their defenses are so low that these individuals are often the sorts who catch every bug that comes their way. From a holistic perspective, it is a weakness in the body’s defenses that truly causes these people to suffer through allergy season. Suppressing the immune system is really quite counter-productive if one has any hope of ridding themselves of their allergies.

So why do these individuals suffer more in the spring (or fall)? The change of seasons is when our defenses must work their hardest, since our temperature regulatory system must acclimate to sudden environmental changes. Those of us who suffer most, are those whose bodies have some trouble adjusting to climate changes quickly.

So although, on a molecular level, allergy sufferers may seem to be overreacting to pollen etc. in truth, they usually have an extremely weak immune system. The ultimate proof of this is that these individuals get better with treatments that strengthen their immune system. If this was really a pure overreaction, then strengthening the immunity should cause their allergies to get worse (which does not happen).

When an individual comes to me at the peak of allergy season, the goal of treatment is to allay their symptoms. We do so in much the same way that we would when treating someone who is suffering from a cold or flu. However, the goal is never to suppress the immune reaction. Rather, we strengthen the immune system so that it is able to eliminate pathogens.

This works much better for colds than it does for chronic allergies. This is because when patients are suffering from an acute attack of a chronic condition, we must treat the acute symptoms before we can address the underlying condition. Every condition has layers. In order to treat the innermost layers and bring about a cure, you must first eliminate the external layers, i.e. the acute symptoms, only then can you deal with the underlying systemic imbalance.


 

Heather Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, 2011

Ibid.

Natasha Campbell McBride, MD, Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D...., 2004

About the author