Allergens & Allergies
Millions of people suffering from a wide variety of conditions, allergies included, have benefited from chiropractic care even though chiropractic is not an allergy treatment. Why? Because chiropractic is a method of health care that permits your body to function at its best. That is especially important if you suffer from allergies.
But first, let’s find out, what is an allergy? Your immune system keeps you 100% natural, organic, unadulterated you! It recognizes and destroys anything not supposed to be in you: bacteria,* viri, pollutants, dust, pollen, drugs, tumors, dead pieces of your own cells, and even artificial hearts and donor organs.** (Metal and plastic, however, don’t trigger an immune reaction.) A healthy immune system means high resistance to disease and infection, better ability to deal with stress, and greater health and well-being.
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Immunological Diseases
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Your immune system is influenced by your nerves and hormones, by your diet and by emotional stress. If unhealthy, your immune system may fail to recognize and remove abnormal cells (such as cancers); may not overcome infection; may overreact to foreign substances (bee stings, penicillin, foods or drugs); become depressed (as in AIDS) or even attack itself!
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Allergens & Allergies
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The most common immune disorder is the allergic reaction which occurs when the immune system overreacts to an allergen (dust, pollen, milk, dog or cat dander, strawberries, etc.) and produces too many neutralizing chemicals (especially histamines) to counteract it.
* Bacteria normally live in some parts of your body (i.e. your gut and skin). When bacteria travel to places they shouldn’t be, then your immune system will attack them.
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** Organ recipients must take drugs to suppress their immune systems so these “foreign” organs are not rejected.
Your immune system keeps you 100% natural, organic, unadulterated YOU. It recognizes and destroys anything not supposed to be in you.
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What Causes Allergies?
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No one knows for sure, though according to some authors childhood vaccinations are suspect. As writer Walene James has stated: “Vaccination lays the foundation for autoimmune diseases and other disorders of the immune system such as rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatic fever, lupus erythematosus, scleroderma…. It is reasonable to assume that our contemporary ‘epidemic’ of allergies has at least some of its roots in the practice of vaccination.”
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The Orthodox Medical Approach To Allergy Treatment
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Orthodox medicine has no cure for allergies, only treatment, and, according to Robert Mendelsohn, M.D., “You can depend on most doctors to largely ignore the cause … unfortunately, their treatment is often worse than the disease, especially since the relatively safe folk-measures of yesteryear have been replaced by the sophisticated, dangerous drugs of modern medicine.”
Since runny eyes, irritation, redness, fullness in the sinuses and other allergy symptoms are caused by histamines, antihistamines are often prescribed to dry mucus membranes. However, antihistamines can cause serious heart problems and should not be used with alcohol, sedatives or tranquilizers.
More recently Canadian researcher Lorne Brandes, in an article published in the May 1994 journal of the National Cancer institute, has produced research showing that certain antihistamines (Claritin’”, Hismanal” and AtaraXT”) make cancerous tumors grow faster in lab rodents.
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Breastfeeding
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Clinical studies have shown that breastfed babies have fewer allergy problems than formula-fed babies. Non-breastfed babies also have a higher incidence of more severe infections.
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The Chiropractic Approach
By releasing stress on the nervous system, chiropractic permits the immune system to function more effectively-something all allergy sufferers need. A nervous system without stress functions more efficiently. Recent understandings in psychoneuroimmunology reveal that when the nervous system functions better the immune system benefits.
Chiropractors correct a basic cause of body malfunction to improve the function of your immune system. Please note that the chiropractic approach is to remove vertebral subluxations, a common spinal distortion that puts stress on your nervous system. Freed of nervous system stress, your body will work more effectively to neutralize the allergy-causing chemicals in your environment. As Dr. Kurt Donsback has said: “A healthy body is capable of neutralizing these toxic substances and a body which has malfunctioning defense mechanisms cannot. The emphasis on allergies must be on building a healthy body, not on trying to use evasive tactics by eliminating all the allergens.”
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Postscript
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No matter what disease or condition you have, you can benefit from a healthy spine. Spinal health can be as important for your overall healing as proper nutrition. Are you and your family carrying the vertebral subluxation complex in your spines? Only a chiropractic spinal checkup will tell.
Among the many things contributing to your health: the quality of the air, food and water you take in; how you handle emotional stress; your inherited weaknesses and strengths; your use of drugs; exercise; and relaxation-a healthy spine is absolutely essential. In some people it is a major factor and can make the difference between a life of health, strength and vitality or a life of disease, weakness and disability.
A healthy spine can improve your life-see your chiropractor for periodic spinal checkups.
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BOOSTING YOUR IMMUNITY THROUGH CHIROPRACTIC
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In 1975, Ronald Pero, Ph.D., chief of cancer prevention research at New York’s Preventive Medical Institute and Professor of Medicine in Environmental Health at New York University, began developing scientifically valid ways to estimate individual susceptibility to various chronic diseases. Pero and his colleagues found strong evidence that susceptibility to cancer could be gauged by the activities of various enzymes involved in metabolic and genetic changes from exposure to carcinogenic or “mutagenic” chemicals. An individual’s immune system responsiveness, or “immune competence,” also was directly linked to certain DNA repairing enzymes that provided an objective way to assess disease susceptibility. Lack of those enzymes, Pero said, “definitely limits not only your lifespan, but also your ability to resist serious disease consequences.”
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Pero was fascinated by various hormones’ synergistic relationship with other cancer-inducing agents to promote the disease. For example, thyroid hormones affect the early phases of radiation- and chemically-induced cancers. If the thyroid produces too much of either thyroxine or thyroidstimulating hormone, cancer risk greatly increases. And because the nervous system regulates hormonal balances, it too can influence susceptibility to cancer. Along these lines, various kinds of spinal cord injuries are accompanied by a high risk of developing cancer, particularly lymphoma and lymphatic leukemia. This connection led Pero to consider chiropractic a potential alternative for reducing the risk of immune breakdown and disease.
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In 1986, Pero collaborated with Joseph Flesia, D.C., Chairman of the Board of Directors for Chiropractic Basic Science Research Foundation (CBSRF). With a grant from CBSRF, they began a research project at the University of Lund in Lund, Sweden. Using Pero’s tests to gauge resistance to hazardous environmental chemicals, they hypothesized that people with cancer would have a suppressed immune response to such a toxic burden, while healthy people and those receiving chiropractic care would have a relatively enhanced response.
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Measuring 107 individuals who had received long term chiropractic care, Pero’s team had surprising findings. All chiropractic patients were `genetically normal, ” that is, they had no obvious genetic reasons for increased resistance or susceptibility to disease. Any difference, therefore, had to be accounted for by environmental or therapeutic factors. The chiropractic patients also had 200% greater immune competence than those who had not received chiropractic care, and 400% greater immune competence than those with cancer or other serious diseases. Despite a wide range of ages in this study, immune competence did not show any decline with age; it was uniform for the entire group.
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Pero concluded that “chiropractic may optimize whatever genetic abilities you have” so that you can fully resist serious disease. “I’m very excited to see that without chemical intervention …this particular group of patients under chiropractic care did show a very improved response,” he told CBSRF. “These changes occur from chiropractic treatment.”
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Source: East West Health Magazine, November, 1989.