by Healing Alternatives

Have seasonal allergies and asthma got you down?  Are food sensitivities giving you gas, bloating and other uncomfortable digestive symptoms?  Feeling fatigued from all the nasal congestion?  Eczema or psoriasis making “shorts weather” unsightly?  Tired of trying to find a laundry detergent that doesn’t make you sneeze?

LDA is a revolution in allergy relief.   Safe and convenient, with no risk of anaphylaxis, LDA is cost effective and may help you get the long- term relief you’ve been looking for in an allergy treatment.

For more information visit www.healingalternativesinc.com

The post Low Dose Antigen Therapy – For Allergy and Food Sensitivity appeared first on Alternatives for Healing Articles.

Dr. Jimmy Steger

The most common and best understood type of allergy is a reaction in which the body’s immune system overreacts to a food and mistakenly produces antibodies (called IgE) to the food.

This can cause reactions, sometimes severe, that affect the skin, breathing, gut and heart.

Intolerance is an adverse reaction to a food that does not involve the immune system. Symptoms are generally less severe, and can include headaches, gut problems and worsening of skin conditions such as eczema. Intolerance is much less likely to be life-threatening than a true allergy.

What is an allergy?

According to the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and allergy (ASCIA) education resources website, the word “allergy” is frequently overused and misused to include any irritating or uncomfortable symptoms after eating.

Strictly speaking the term should only be used for the symptoms which develop after eating certain foods as part of the immune response.

In an allergic reaction, the body’s immune system mistakenly believes the food is harmful and tries to protect itself. In doing so it overreacts and produces, for example, harmful antibodies to fight the food “allergens”.

In turn, these special antibodies (called IgE) make the body produce histamines and other chemicals, causing reactions that affect the skin, breathing, gut and heart.

IgE antibodies can also “cross react “with other allergens. For example, someone with a latex allergy may also react after eating a banana, kiwi fruit or avocado.  Up to 50 per cent of people who react to one tree nut (including almonds, brazil nuts, Cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts) will react to other tree nuts.

A recently recognized form of food allergy is the “oral allergy syndrome”, where a person experiences a cross reaction between pollens and fresh fruit and vegetables.

This “cross-reactivity” is also the reason why some adults with a predisposition to other allergies suddenly develop a food allergy.

For example, a person with a birch pollen allergy can suddenly became allergic to apple or kiwi fruit allergens.

More adults prone to allergies are developing cross reactions after they are overexposed to certain foods (such as acquiring wheat allergies after working in a bakery).

What are the most common food allergies?

Allergies are mostly triggered by nuts, shellfish, fish, milk, eggs, wheat and soybeans.

Adults are more likely to be allergic to fish, shellfish and nuts, with children suffering more from allergies to milk, eggs and peanuts.  Reactions to seeds and fruits are also becoming more common.

There are also cultural differences in allergy patterns, In Japan, rice allergy is common. In the Middle East and Australia, sesame allergy is on the rise.

We know the treatment for ceeliac disease is a gluten-free diet for life. Although people with celiac disease produce antibodies the allergic process is different from that seen in most other allergic reactions.

In celiac disease, gluten reacts with the small intestine, and activates the immune system to attack the delicate lining of the bowel.

The normally rippled lining of the intestine becomes damaged and inflamed, and forms the characteristic flat appearance of celiac disease.

The surface area, which enables the absorption of nutrients and minerals from food, is seriously depleted, leading to gastrointestinal and malabsorptive symptoms.

Common Intolerances

Almost any food can cause an intolerance, but the repeat offenders are;

OFFENDER: Lactose

FOUND IN: Milk and milk products. Yoghurts have little lactose and hard cheeses have none.

OFFENDER: salicylates

FOUND IN: Natural food chemicals found in a wide variety of fruits and vegetables such as cauliflower, eggplant, broccoli, tomato, apple, orange, and pineapple. Also found in nuts, spices and aspirin.

OFFENDER: Amines

FOUND IN: Histamines and histamine-like chemicals produced during fermentation, and the ageing and ripening of foods. Found in wine, processed meats, hard cheese, tomato paste, chocolate, and many fruits and vegetables.

OFFENDER: Glutamate

FOUND IN: An amino acid found naturally in all protein foods such as cheese, processed meats and milk. MSG (additive621) is a type of glutamate, and natural glutamates are also found in Soy Sauce, broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, grapes, plums and many others foods

I certainly hope this helps you understand a little bit more about allergies and food intolerances in order to help you or one of your family members a more pleasant and healthier life.

Until next time,  Stay Healthy!

Dr. Jimmy Steger

To learn more visit http://drsteger.net/

The post Allergy vs. Intolerance appeared first on Alternatives for Healing Articles.

by Elizabeth Chen Christenson, MD, LAc

Allergy is a disorder of the immune system, which has ability to recognize myriad of foreign antigens. It is characterized by excessive stimulation of B-lymphocyte by allergens to produce antibody IgE which attach to mast cells and basophils resulting in release of a variety of powerful mediators, such as histamine, responsible for the clinical expression of type I hypersensitivity. Common allergic reactions include mild case of eczema, hives, or running nose, itchy and watery eyes known as hay fever, moderate case of asthma and life threatening case of anaphylactic shock.

Clinical diagnosis of IgE-mediated allergy depends on the history and results of the skin test or radioallergosorgent (RAST) tests. Allopathic treatment include avoid allergens, Antihistamine, Benadryl, Epinephrine, Steroids and Immune-therapy (allergy shots).

According to Chinese medical theory, energy flow in acupuncture meridians can be blocked by physical, chemical or emotional noxious stimuli. These stimuli and anything we eat, touch, smell or thoughts in that moment are ingrained in our body memory. Henceforth in the future when we come in contact with those substances our memory cells trigger an alert signal which lead to a variety of physical and / or mental symptoms including allergic reactions as viewed by western medicine.

NAET – Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Techniques – uses a combination of allopathy, applied kinesiology, acupressure and / or acupuncture and nutritional evaluation to detect and eliminate allergies without going through long term fasting, elimination diets, or lifelong avoidance of allergens. A Kinesiology technique (muscle response testing or MRT), based on a concept of muscles get weaker in the presence of noxious stimuli, is used to detect allergens.

The treatment involves light acupressure applied along both sides of the spinal column in an area where the energy flow of a meridian (Urinary Bladder Meridian) intersects with the nerve roots in order to teach the body/mind not to over react to noxious stimuli thus free the allergy reactions.

After the acupressure treatment, a strong MRT indicates that the allergy has been removed. Specific acupressure points are then massaged or acupuncture needles may be inserted for 20 minutes to stabilize the treatment. The substance must then be completely avoided for 25 hours following the treatment.

As strange as it may seem, energy field of the practitioner, the treatment room, the patient and family member can affect the result of MRT and treatment. These may be reasons why different practitioners have different success rate.

Hawaii law requires acupuncture license to perform this technique. Dr. Christenson have used this technique with or without acupuncture for pediatric and adult patients for the past 15 years with great success in clearing ordinary allergy, emotional issues associated with food, environmental allergens or people, a variety of pain problems, asthma, fibromyalgia, chronic fatique, insomnia, anxiety, depression, GI distress (indigestion, ulcer, constipation, Crohn’s disease or Ulcerative Colitis), PMS, infertility, menstrual abnormalities, cancer, ADD / Autism in children, relationship etc.

Reach Dr. Christenson at 808-692-0908. www.chimedicalcenter.com

The post Allergy Elimination Without Drugs appeared first on Alternatives for Healing Articles.

by Dr. Victoria Goldsten, HD

I am Dr. Victoria Goldsten, a natural health care nurse and an integrative homeopath with the Washington Institute of Natural Medicine. I would like to explore with you my long time experiences with allergies and I how have helped myself and others.

When I was a child I suffered from respiratory allergies. I strongly remember when I was 12 years old how my nose was so clogged up that I could not get a drop of air through.  It was a very uncomfortable situation. In those days air conditioning was unheard of so the air was not filtered at all because the widows were open and the pollen came in freely. We would have to go to the movie theater to cool off.  I distinctly remember lying in bed feeling very hot and unable to breathe through my nose.

My mother wanted me to take an over the counter allergy pill but I could not swallow pills. I would gag when I would try.  Because of that I tried to suffer through it.  One day she crushed the pill and I took it.  It tasted bad but it helped me feel better.

That was the beginning of my long term use of decongestants and antihistamines.  As I got older and in my teens natural health care was beginning to be explored by what we called the “hippy generation.”  In the late 1960s and early 1970s health food stores started to pop up and my friends and I would frequent them for food, snacks, and books.  At that time I would explore the herbal and homeopathic aisles for natural health remedies.  What I found though trial and error was that there were certain remedies that made me feel better.  Due to this positive response I was determined to study about natural health and gradually educated myself. After high school I went to nursing school and also began to read further about alternative medicine.  Upon completion of natural health care courses I began consulting clients as a natural health care nurse and Integrative Homeopath.  I worked out of my home consulting in the off hours from my nursing job at a local hospital. What I found was extremely dramatic and beneficial for myself and for my clients. 

As natural health care became a stronger component in my life I decided to step into it full time and I opened the Washington Institute of Natural Medicine in Washington, D.C.  There I worked as a sole practitioner and then eventually added other practitioners and began to teach about the natural methods.  It became very rewarding.  Through that time I learned even more about the allergy battle and its natural treatment.

I found herbal decongestants and homeopathic desentizaton formulas.  The desentization formulas are what I call an “allergy shot in a bottle.”  Not only was I able to help myself but I was helping others in an unbelievable way.  I had one client with a severe cat allergy to the point that she was unable to live with the cats she loved.  After consulting with her I recommended liver cleansing, anti-inflammatory homeopathics, and homeopathic allerzodes.  The allerzodes are formulas that are created with low levels of allergens in it.  In her case the formula had homeopathic cat dander in it.

There are all kinds of allerzodes in homeopathy. The types of formulas you can find have tree pollen, dust, mold, animal dander, and even assorted foods in them for desentization.  With such an array of remedies I was able to help people with many types of allergies.

The Washington Institute of Natural Medicine has now grown and flourished in Washington DC.  It has expanded to a larger new location and has more treatment rooms available. We now have a larger variety of remedies and treatments to help with the allergy battle. I am proud of our accomplishments and plan to continue helping client with ailments naturally. 

Washington Institute of Natural Medicine

Dr. Victoria Goldsten, HD

5101 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20016

(202) 237-7681, (202) 686-8202

About Author:

Dr. Victoria Goldsten, HD a Natural Health Care Nurse and Integrative Homeopathic Doctor has been caring for the sick since 1973. Her first health care experience was in nursing at several local hospitals and health care facilities. She later studied and received certificates in: homeopathy, Reiki, acupressure, and hypnotherapy. She has a B.S. degree in Nursing and a Doctorate degree in Homeopathy. She is currently working as the Director and an Integrative Homeopath at the Washington Institute of Natural Medicine. The Institute is located at 5101 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016.  The phone number is (202) 686-8202.

The web site is: www.NaturalHealthDC.com

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