Back to the Cracked Pot
Yes, I am an allergic person. We may all be, to some extent, simply by living a modern life and being exposed to, quite frankly, unnatural things. I do wonder about people who are allergic to animals, though, as critters are 'natural' (more so than us, I often think) and, of course, so many of us are sneezing right now as ragweed pollinates most of the immediate universe. I do like to go either someplace that gets too cold in the winter for the stuff to grow (like the Adirondacks) or that is too dry for the plant so that I can escape the noxious atmosphere. But I sigh and take my pills and use my spray. Thank goodness I haven't had an asthmatic episode in quite some time.
I have been known to speak of 'allergenic load,' myself - one allergy all by itself may be more an irritant than a problem but pile on several allergies and you can be quite sick. I have had episodes of this, mainly in dirty, moldy workplaces, especially when particularly messy workmen start moving ceiling tiles. I am not sure that I completely subscribe to the entire 'Environmental Illness' theory, however, just as I lose patience with people who continually whine about fibromyalgia or other such conditions. I kind of fall someplace in the middle, between folks who believe that most illness and disease can be explained by allergy and those folks who think that it is all in your head and you should get off your dead ass, slacker! Does allergy explain all arthritis, asthma, autism, epilepsy, PMS, irritable bowel and adult-onset diabetes? Can many mental illnesses, forms of fatigue syndromes, hyperactivity and obesity be the results of allergy?
Certainly some of these things can be how allergy manifests: allergy is not just indicated by a runny nose or a rash. You can go into a brain fog, feel tired, have digestive upset, or just shake and shimmy. Food sensitivities can be particularly hard to figure out: I do think that there are problems with many unnatural ingredients in our diets like dyes and refined sugars but also with 'natural' things that we never completely evolved to consume. I have trouble with milk, for example, but do fine with cheese and yogurt. I definitely have trouble with sugar on an empty stomach but can eat fruit without issues (that I know of). Many unrecognized allergies are to grain products - perhaps we haven't completely adjusted to eating the ground, separated seed meal called flour, much less yeast. You might have no problem eating corn on the cob yet show severe allergy when consuming a processed food with high-fructose corn syrup way up on the list of ingredients.
One idea I could really wrap myself around was the thought that one could crave foods that one is sensitive to - that addiction can be wrapped up with allergy. Don't we want candy and chips, crave bread and pasta, demand potatoes or peanuts or tomato sauce every day? There is more to it, I'm sure, but it intrigues me to think that I want the one thing that is most likely to cause problems.
Another interesting idea: adult-onset diabetes can occur because of allergy. You eat foods you are sensitive to, you swell up and your carbohydrate-processing cycle no longer functions correctly. If you don't process proteins correctly, so Dr. Null cites, ammonia may build up in your body, which also causes problems - a few of the environmental illness crowd cite this as a factor in alzheimer's syndrome and some forms of sclerosis. This is interesting but it may be a bit of a stretch to connect food sensitivity to fatal diseases quite this much.
Right now I'm going to stick with the idea that we all eat way too much sugar, too much unnatural refined stuff, too much processed non-food. We were never meant to eat fried food, high-fructose corn syrup, red dye #40 and carbonated beverages but, then again, cow's milk and tuna are frequent allergy-provoking foods. Eggs, various grain products, yeast, classes of fruits or vegetables can all be culprits in allergy. After a certain point I wonder what you can eat that couldn't possibly cause a reaction.
I have been known to speak of 'allergenic load,' myself - one allergy all by itself may be more an irritant than a problem but pile on several allergies and you can be quite sick. I have had episodes of this, mainly in dirty, moldy workplaces, especially when particularly messy workmen start moving ceiling tiles. I am not sure that I completely subscribe to the entire 'Environmental Illness' theory, however, just as I lose patience with people who continually whine about fibromyalgia or other such conditions. I kind of fall someplace in the middle, between folks who believe that most illness and disease can be explained by allergy and those folks who think that it is all in your head and you should get off your dead ass, slacker! Does allergy explain all arthritis, asthma, autism, epilepsy, PMS, irritable bowel and adult-onset diabetes? Can many mental illnesses, forms of fatigue syndromes, hyperactivity and obesity be the results of allergy?
Certainly some of these things can be how allergy manifests: allergy is not just indicated by a runny nose or a rash. You can go into a brain fog, feel tired, have digestive upset, or just shake and shimmy. Food sensitivities can be particularly hard to figure out: I do think that there are problems with many unnatural ingredients in our diets like dyes and refined sugars but also with 'natural' things that we never completely evolved to consume. I have trouble with milk, for example, but do fine with cheese and yogurt. I definitely have trouble with sugar on an empty stomach but can eat fruit without issues (that I know of). Many unrecognized allergies are to grain products - perhaps we haven't completely adjusted to eating the ground, separated seed meal called flour, much less yeast. You might have no problem eating corn on the cob yet show severe allergy when consuming a processed food with high-fructose corn syrup way up on the list of ingredients.
One idea I could really wrap myself around was the thought that one could crave foods that one is sensitive to - that addiction can be wrapped up with allergy. Don't we want candy and chips, crave bread and pasta, demand potatoes or peanuts or tomato sauce every day? There is more to it, I'm sure, but it intrigues me to think that I want the one thing that is most likely to cause problems.
Another interesting idea: adult-onset diabetes can occur because of allergy. You eat foods you are sensitive to, you swell up and your carbohydrate-processing cycle no longer functions correctly. If you don't process proteins correctly, so Dr. Null cites, ammonia may build up in your body, which also causes problems - a few of the environmental illness crowd cite this as a factor in alzheimer's syndrome and some forms of sclerosis. This is interesting but it may be a bit of a stretch to connect food sensitivity to fatal diseases quite this much.
Right now I'm going to stick with the idea that we all eat way too much sugar, too much unnatural refined stuff, too much processed non-food. We were never meant to eat fried food, high-fructose corn syrup, red dye #40 and carbonated beverages but, then again, cow's milk and tuna are frequent allergy-provoking foods. Eggs, various grain products, yeast, classes of fruits or vegetables can all be culprits in allergy. After a certain point I wonder what you can eat that couldn't possibly cause a reaction.