March 21 - Wellness

According to a Discovery channel show, doctors now think that picking you nose and, ewwwwww, eating it may actually be good for you. Apparently the more heavily bacteria and virus laden crusty stuff being carried to the large intestine serves as a sort of inoculation. How's that for an, er, nugget of wisdom?

This is somewhat reminiscent of current thinking on allergies. Many doctors now believe that it is our overly clean and sterile environments growing up that lead to increased sensitivity later in life. Lack of exposure to pollens, animal dander and such keep us from developing a resistance to their power to irritate. These same doctors endorse families with young children having cats and dogs to introduce allergens into the home and thereby immunize them. I think these guys just had spouses that wouldn't let them get dogs.

Allergies are curious things, no doubt, but I can't help wonder why so many researchers try to deny a genetic link. My Grandfather had allergies, my Dad did and I do too. All relatively severe, mostly upper respiratory type allergies, no asthma. All allergic to more or less the same things. My son appears to suffer from them, similarly. From a statistical sampling of one, I conclude that allergies are clearly hereditary. Nevertheless, I've been told by many doctors that I didn't get my allergies from my parents.

Allergies are hard to detect, too. Especially food allergies. It took 30 years for me to figure out that I am allergic to milk. I am slowly realizing that I have an intolerance to nut products too. Looking back, the signs are clear that I had a milk allergy presenting itself as early as age 4 or 5. Because the results are quite painful I remember quite clearly events that, with better knowledge, clearly correlate with increased milk consumption.

When I was around 10 years old, for a few years, we would take a family vacation to Hawaii. During those trips, at some time, I would suffer from severe abdominal cramps. We would always chalk that up to unfamiliar food. In retrospect, I know that it was because of a small change to my diet. On these trips, we'd still eat at McDonald's for lunch like we often did back then. As a treat because we were on vacation I'd have a milk shake, something I'd never do back home. Boom. A milk shake today, untreated, would most likely leave me writhing on the floor in agony.

Discovering food allergies is primarily the process of correlating these sorts of events. Unless you do controlled experiments with your food intake, it is very hard to pinpoint what is causing you problems. event hen it is hard because the foods people are most often allergic to are so prevalent in the foods we eat. Two of the worst are milk and gluten which are in just about every processed food product. Further, your allergic sensitivity may vary over time.

If your child has recurrent, undiagnosed ailments, try to see if you can correlate them with some consistent exposure. You might save them years of pain if you are successful.