Allergies, Allergy Symptoms

Allergy

By Janet Dauble

The word "allergy" covers a lot of ground. However, when used, most people think of pollen, dander, mold and shellfish allergy which provoke such symptoms as running eyes, sneezing, rash/hives, asthma, and anaphylactic shock. Thus when someone suggests to a chronically ill person that allergies may be causing their symptoms, they deny it on the basis of believing that only the few symptoms mentioned above relate to allergy. There is a similar response if someone should ask his physician if his symptom could be caused by allergy. A friend recently figured out that milk and yogurt caused him to vomit. He told his doctor about it and asked his doctor if he could be allergic to dairy. His doctor answered, "Well, you don't have a rash."

Theron Randolph, M.D., and others before him, found that allergens could be foods, chemicals in everyday products, metals, dust, mold, animal dander, etc., and that symptoms could affect every organ system in the body. He uses the term "allergy" throughout his book An Alternative Approach to Allergy to describe what some people prefer to call sensitivity or intolerances.

Here are some interesting excerpts from the Introduction to Dr. Randolph's book written by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D. regarding little known history of the field of allergy.

The concept of illness as an interaction between an external factor and an internal capacity for resistance did not emerge until the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The science of immunology took into account this individualized response to external factors. An equally profound advance was made by the Austrian pediatrician, Clemens von Pirquet, who coined the term "allergy" in 1906. This term was derived from two Greek words and meant "altered reactivity." An "allergy" was literally a response to a substance which affected one person but not another. It was a personal reaction to some common nontoxic substance. Pollen, for example caused reactions in some people but was harmless to most. Lucretius had expressed the same idea poetically 2,000 years previously. "One man's meat is another man's poison." Von Pirquet and the other pioneers of allergy put such observations on a more scientific basis.

The field of allergy flourished, and scientists began to extend the basic concepts to various aspects of the environment, including food. (Allergy-like reactions to uncommon foods, such as cashews or shell fish, were known to the ancient Greeks.) At the turn of the century, in fact, Francis Hare, an Australian physician, wrote a massive two-volume work on the Food Factor in Disease (1905). In it, he detailed numerous cases in which common ailments, including apparent "mental" problems, were caused by eating common foods. In 1912, a New York pediatrician, had diagnosed an allergy to eggs in a child, the first time in modern medicine that a common food had been linked specifically to allergy. In the 1920's, Albert Rowe published his first observations on how to eliminate suspected foods from the diet in order to detect allergies to them.

In 1925, however, as the field began to burgeon and become respectable, European allergists prevailed upon their American counterparts to restrict the definition of allergy to bodily mechanisms of reaction: in other words, allergy would now be explained solely in terms of immunologic theory. Allergies had previously been described rather loosely as "altered reactions occurring with time," a definition which left room for the new phenomena, such as food allergies, then first being observed. But after 1925, allergies were defined in terms of reactions between antigens and antibodies in the body, similar to the reactions which occur in some infections.

This new definition made the field of allergy admirably "scientific," in the narrow sense, since antibodies could be measured with ever-increasing precision. But with this decree, the allergist ruled out many bizarre and puzzling reactions which formerly had been a valid subject for inquiry. From this point forward, allergists were divided into two camps, the "orthodox," who accepted the antigen-antibody definition and worked with in its boundaries, and the "unorthodox," who continued to investigate reactions in which such immunological reactions could not necessarily be demonstrated.

Thousands of chronically and acutely ill people are very grateful for such "unorthodox" allergists. (Read about Theron Randolph, M.D. in the Environmental Illness section of the web site). And many tens of thousands more diagnosed with many named diseases would be grateful if they knew that:

allergies could affect all the organ systems of the body causing a myriad of symptoms (see symptoms below);

allergies can be hidden and entirely unknown to the patient;

chronic exposures to foods and chemicals can cause chronic symptoms;

reactions can be delayed (causing reactions up to three weeks so no connection could be made between ingestion/exposure and symptoms); and

their sensitivity was initially caused by exposure to sensitizing toxins in our every day environment.

Orthodox allergy testing is only about 40% accurate for this type of allergy. In his book, Dr. Randolph stated "According to Albert Rowe, M.D., 'It is generally agreed that clinical allergy may exist in the absence of positive skin reactions, especially those to the scratch test. This is true primarily in food allergy and to a lesser extent in inhalent allergy. In a statistical study of intradermal skin tests, Rinkel found such tests to be only forty percent accurate, and often less so.'"

Resources

1. To locate an Environmental Medicine physician for testing, contact the:

American Academy of Environmental Medicine
6505 E. Central Suite 296
Wichita, KS 67206
316-684-5500

2. The blood test for delayed allergies (up to three weeks!) to foods, chemicals, molds, etc. can be ordered by any physician, and in some states by chiropractors. A blood draw kit will be furnished. The test is not covered by insurance and costs $595.00 for 307 items to be tested. Attention: The positive results of the ELISA/ACT test may be discounted because the patient perceives no problem with the food or chemical. And, items they may be aware they are sensitive to are not listed as positive. This is because this test reveals allergens from three hours after contact up to three weeks. It will not show items known to be allergens unless they are both immediate and delayed reactors. (Immediate reacting allergens may also be unknown due to chronic exposure to them.)

ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies, Inc.
46161 Westlake Drive, Suite 300
Sterling, VA 20165
800-553-5472

3. A blood test for both immediate and delayed reactions to 88 foods can also be done by a blood draw kit. Contact:

Genova Diagnostics (formerly Great Smokies Lab)
63 Zillicoa St.
Asheville, NC 28801
828-253-0621

4. Share, Care and Prayer offers copies free of charge of The Rotation Diet and The Elimination Diet. We also sell Dr. Randolph's book An Alternative Approach to Allergy for $16.00 plus $1.59 for shipping. (California residents, please add sales tax.)

Anyone who suffers from allergy and chronic illnesses should take the time to read about Environmental Medicine. May God guide you to a correct diagnosis and healing of your symptoms.