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 Few
people, including medical allergists, realize how widespread allergies
are, and how they cause or contribute to far more serious health problems,
physical and mental, than is generally believed. Perhaps 60% of the USA
population suffers from undetected food allergies alone. Common food
allergens include wheat flour products, cow's milk and milk products,
eggs, corn, rye, soy, tomato, potato, peanut, citrus, beef, pork,
shellfish, oranges, malt, chocolate, coffee and other caffeine products,
MSG, and aspartame products such as "NutraSweet," "Equal," "Spoonful,"
etc.).
Over $600
million was spent last year on allergy medications, many over-the-counter,
all of which give only short-term if any relief, are self-perpetuating,
i.e., the more you take them, the more you need, and usually have harmful
side effects. Allergies are now the 6th leading cause of chronic illness
in the USA, and over $10 billion is spent annually in the USA on their
treatment.
Here is an incomplete list of symptoms or adverse
health conditions caused by allergies and/or environmental sensitivities,
or to which these significantly contribute, includes:
hay fever (not
caused by hay and not involving a fever), frequent sneezing and/or
coughing, runny nose, sinus congestion, fatigue or low energy, chronic
fatigue syndrome, indigestion, chronic bloating and gas, nausea, itching
(especially of eyes, nose, anus, and/or vagina), headaches including
migraines, acne, eczema, hives, psoriasis, brain fog, memory loss,
migraine, emotional disorders, depression, irritability, panic attacks, cravings and
addictions, chronic non-infectious sore throat, ringing in the ears
(tinnitus), dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain, chronic muscle or joint
pain, fibromyalgia, asthma, bronchitis, rheumatoid arthritis,
constipation, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis,
Crohn's disease and other bowel inflammatory conditions, impaired immune
function, high blood pressure (hypertension), low blood sugar
(hypoglycemia), diabetes, rapid heart beat (tachycardia), heart murmurs,
sudden non-infectious voice changes, chronic dry eyes or mouth (Sjogren's
syndrome), visual disturbances, glaucoma, puffiness around eyes, learning
and behaviour disorders including attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD), bed wetting (enuresis), aphthous ulcers (small ulcers in mouth),
cold sores, celiac sprue, gallbladder disease, kidney problems, middle ear
infection (otitis media), epilepsy, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis
(MS), anaphylactic shock, and sudden death.
Within the past
20 years some clinical ecologists (mostly more holistic MDs) and natural
health practitioners have redefined allergy as a disturbance of the body's
natural flow and balance of meridian energy from exposure to even a
very small amount of a particular substance or radiation. By this
definition, in addition to obvious allergies and environmental
sensitivities, there may be hidden allergies, which a medical doctor might
ignore because of the absence of pathology or
symptoms like those above. Both obvious and hidden allergies appear to
stress organs and tissues, and may lead to "disease."
Applied Kinesiology and Food Allergy Testing
Applied Kinesiology or
Autonomic Response Testing offers a simple, effective way to help
identify food allergies and
 intolerances. Kinesiology
is based on the scientific understanding that the body is a bio-electrical
system and is continually in communication with each of its 600+ muscles;
in fact it recognizes that there are connections between muscles, organs,
and the Chinese meridian system. If an organ or other reflex is
electrically in balance, the muscle remains strong when a stimulus is
applied. If a muscle is out of balance, the muscle will become weak in the
presence of an applied stimulus, such as when a practitioner applies a
consistent force on a muscle in order to observe the body’s response.
The concept of
energy or chi
flowing in body pathways known as meridians is the basis of ancient and
much modern oriental medicine, including acupuncture and what
has come to be called "energy medicine" or "vibrational medicine," as described for example in the excellent 1995 book, "Vibrational Medicine,"
by Richard Gerber, MD. Although many USA MDs continue to deny the reality
of meridians, there is ample evidence of their physical existence (they
are very tiny ducts in which a clear colorless fluid slowly flows,
completely independent of the blood and lymph circulatory systems).
Applied
kinesiology or Autonomic Response Testing (ART) is a useful
modality
for uncovering food allergies and or intolerances because it
works with
the body's bio-electrical pathways or meridians.
Muscle testing,
therefore, is a very efficient system of obtaining feedback in order to
examine the current electrical status of the body. By applying a degree of
pressure to a large muscle, such as the deltoid muscle in the
arm/shoulder, it is possible to obtain information relating to energy
blockages, the health of organs, nutritional needs, and in identifying
food allergies and or intolerances.
Appled Kinesiology Research, Published Papers and Articles
Some symptoms
which might be thought of as due to food allergies may actually be food
intolerance, which come from eating more of a given food than the body can
metabolically process (often due to one or more nutritional deficiencies).
A fairly common intolerance is that of milk sugar or lactose, because the
person has insufficient lactase enzyme to digest the lactose.
Sometimes what appears to be an allergy or
intolerance may be a reaction of blood-type-specific lectins in many foods
which, even in very small amounts, can create a severe inflammation of the
mucosal surfaces of the gastrointestinal tract accompanied by an
agglutination or clumping of red and white blood cells which can mimic
allergies. Gluten, the most common lectin found in wheat, barley, oats and
rye (but not in the sprouted form of these grains), tends to bind to the
small intestine lining, inflaming and irritating it, especially in blood
type O people (who, by the way, are more susceptible to allergies than
blood types A, B, and AB).
Food
Allergy and Immunity
A primary cause of allergies is an impaired immune
system. This comes about because of the toxic overload from pesticides,
heavy metals, food additives, many medications (especially antibiotics,
tranquilizers and antidepressants, corticosteroids, birth control pills,
hormone replacement pills), and especially for infants and children
repeated vaccinations and immunizations. Other major causes include poor
diets with resulting nutritional deficiencies, forms of dysbiosis
(abnormal organisms, often in the gut, especially "candida" and
parasites), eating the same foods repetitively (e.g., eating wheat breads
every day encourages a wheat allergy), "leaky gut syndrome" (excessive
permeability of the gastrointestinal tract from dysbiosis, poor digestion,
over-consumption of alcohol, etc.), excessive emotional stress, etc.
Allergies and addictions are closely related. E.g., coffee is a common
addictive allergen, and if a person is allergic to coffee, although they
won't often sneeze or break into a rash when they drink coffee, hours
after the coffee consumption they are likely to experience a headache or
low energy if they refrain from another cup--most people will drink coffee
regularly to get relief from their symptoms without being aware that it is
the coffee that is causing them.
Medical
allergists may suspect an allergy when they encounter symptoms such as
sinus congestion, hay fever, headaches, skin rashes, etc. Except for a
small number of medical doctors trained as medical allergists, most MDs
don't take allergies very seriously. Half of the USA medical schools don't
even have a department of allergy or immunology.
Medical detection of allergies is based on
skin-scratch tests (occasionally including serial endpoint titration),
cytotoxic assay, IgE-radioallergosorbent (RAST) test, IgG ELISA and Food
Immune Complex Assay (FICA), all based on blood reaction to allergens.
Widely used in Europe, but not the USA, is electro-acupuncture biofeedback,
in which a small electrical current is applied at specific acupuncture
points and then potential allergens are introduced into the circuitry. This last method is apparently good for detecting both food allergies and
environmental sensitivities, and even remedies. The other medical methods
mentioned have many false positives (an allergen you don't actually have)
and false negatives (an allergen you have but is not detected), are often
painful or invasive, and expensive; many only measure the presence of IgE
antibodies, whereas most food allergies are dealt with by IgG antibodies.
For more info visit our companion website: www.JoelPriceNaturalhealth.com
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