Health’s Blog

If home remedies and deep house cleaning aren’t sufficient to treat or control your allergies, your doctor may be able to offer you some additional treatments.

Antihistamines. If over-the-counter (OTC) products aren’t adequate, your doctor can prescribe others. For more, read my entry on antihistamines and sinusitis relief.

Cough medicines. When OTC cough drops and dextromethorphan still leave you coughing, ask your doctor if a prescription for benzonotate is appropriate. Codeine is probably the most powerful cough suppressant, but it’s also a narcotic and so should be used with caution and only when necessary.

Nasal steroid sprays. Nasal steroids can be very effective for allergies, but many people don’t experience their full benefit because they don’t understand how these sprays work. Steroids blunt the immune response to whatever is causing the allergy. By blocking the body’s initial reaction to the allergen, steroids reduce histamine production. Less histamine in turn results in less mucus being secreted into the nose and sinuses.

All this is to say that these medications are meant to prevent future mucus production; they will not clear out any of your current congestion (although the moisturizing effect might provide some relief). This means, first, that nasal steroids are unlikely to make much difference when you first start taking them and, second, they may not effectively reduce the allergic response (and annoying symptoms) if you use them only intermittently.

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Many of us are aware that we need to keep the dust, dust mites and mold down to a minimum in our homes, if we have allergies. But how often do we think about our dog and cat as a source of allergens?

If you have allergies and own a dog or cat, listen up. The skin particles shed by dogs and cats, known as dander, can rapidly spread through the house and cause allergic reactions for any allergy sufferer.

If your cat or dog must be in the house, confine them to certain rooms and do not let them in your bedroom.Those skin particles combine with dust mites, molds and other allergens and stick around in the bedroom, a room that we spend a lot of time in. If you have allergies, do not let the pet sleep with you. You would be in close contact with the dander For a number of hours.

Give the pets a regular bath

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by: Barry Cohen

Consumer Reports Magazine Knowingly Recommends Inferior Air Cleaners And Air Purifiers.
This information, is brought to you by Absolute Air Cleaners and Purifiers Inc.

When a trusted and respected consumer product review magazine does not properly test and evaluate a product category, their product recommendations can actually be a HUGE DISSERVICE to their readers. According to IQAir North America and other top air cleaner manufacturers, this is the case in the October 2005 issue of Consumer Reports Magazine where the magazine includes an article titled “Air Cleaners: Some Do Little Cleaning.” In this article, Consumer Reports Magazine glorifies poorly designed, low quality room air cleaners, giving them top recommendations, and failed to recognize vastly superior air cleaners such as of IQAir’s HealthPro HEPA air cleaners, Austin Air Healthmate HEPA air cleaners and the TRACS HEPA air cleaners that also include non ozone producing Ultraviolet light systems that will eliminate mold spores, bacteria and viruses from the indoor air environment. These top quality brands of HEPA air cleaners are recognized by product-testing agencies, well known air cleaner dealers and product reviewers from around the world as the top HEPA room air cleaners on the market available for home, hospital room and business use.

The question of why these other {Superior} top quality HEPA air cleaner brands are not in Consumer Reports’ top recommended air cleaner products is no mystery to air cleaning experts. The problem stems from Consumer Reports’ adoption of a major flawed and outdated clean air delivery rate also known as the CADR testing protocol originating from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM), a trade association that promotes for the interests of their paying members.

There are five huge flaws to Consumer Reports’ air cleaner testing that result in misleading recommendations to consumers.

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In this day and age, it is very common for people to have food intolerances. Weak digestion, unbalanced bowel flora, hypersensitive immune function, stress and poor dietary habits can all play a role in contributing to the symptoms of intolerance. It is very common in clinical practice to see clients showing symptoms related to an inability to properly digest and assimilate certain types of food. Symptoms can be directly related to irritation that these foods cause on the digestive system, such as bloating, reflux, heartburn, flatulence, diarrhoea, bowel noises and constipation. Symptoms may also manifest in different systems of the body, such as skin problems, immune dysfunction or nervous disorders as a direct relation to the intolerance or as a by product of nutritional deficiencies or inflammatory pathways caused by the intolerance to a certain food group.

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From the air filter in your car to the lint filter in your clothes dryer, one thing is certain: If they are not clean, they just do not work. That’s the common wisdom behind nasal cleansing.

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The Real Truth About The ORECK XL Air Purifier
This information, is brought to you by Absolute Air Cleaners and Purifiers Inc.

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o prevent allergy, you should ideally begin with the childhood.By allergy the immune system react against a substance that it is not supposed to react against, and the reaction is often exaggerated. Objects containing substances that commonly cause allergy are domestic dust, animal hair, household chemicals, chlorine, microorganisms, pollen, nuts, citrus fruits and seafood. Also bacteria and parasites can cause inappropriately strong immune reactions.

THE MECHANISMS OF ALLERGY

The total set of reactions occurring by allergy is very complicated. Many of these are the same as by normal immune reaction, even though they occur when they should not take place, Here are listed some of these reactions:

By exposure to a new substance, cells in the immune system learn to recognize that substance (allergen), and it learns to produce anti-bodies towards the substance, and a certain amount of antibodies is produced. The type of anti-bodies called IgE is the most important by allergic reactions.

IgE will glue itself to some cells in the blood called mast-cells, and stick out from the surface of these cells. By following exposures to antigens, these will attach themselves to the IgE-ends sticking out from the mast-cells. This will trigger the mast-cells to produce histamine and other signal substances. These signal substances will then spread through the surrounding tissues.

The signal substances will then trigger the walls of small blood vessels to leak fluid into the tissues and accumulate in the tissues. This will cause tissue swelling. They also will cause blood vessels to widen and thus increase the blood stream in the tissues. The consequence of this will be swelling and redness in the affected body parts. The signal substances will also make glands in the tissue produce more mucus, making symptoms like running nose and tight throat.

The new exposures to the antigens will also provoke even more anti-body production. The antibodies will also glue allergens together to bigger complexes. These complexes can clog small blood vessels and in other ways disturb the function of the affected organ.

The allergen-antibody-complexes are then recognized by the cells and other mechanisms that the body uses to collect and eliminate garbage. Eater-cells gather and engulf the complexes.

The immune system also will make enzymes that attack the antigens to break them down. Also this production is stimulated when antigens attach themselves to anti-bodies at cell surfaces. But these enzymes are not entirely specific, and can also to some extend break down components of the body’s own tissue, causing harm and disease symptoms.

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Normally your immune system’s lymphocytes (white blood cells) travel to all parts of the body scanning the outside of proteins for chemical signatures. If it finds an invading protein, then the white blood cell returns to a lymph node where it becomes a plasma cell and generates antibodies to destroy that specific protein.

An allergy sufferer has a genetic defect that causes the white blood cells to misidentify protein and overreact to a foreign substance. If a person with a seafood allergy eats seafood, the white blood cells mistakenly think that the body is being invaded and produces many times more antibodies than are needed to fight the invaders.

Since there isn’t a real threat (and therefore nothing to attach to), over the next 7 to 10 days, the antibodies attach themselves to mast cells that store histamine. This is known as sensitizing to an allergen.

The next time your body is exposed to that allergen, a cascading allergic reaction occurs. During a cascading reaction all the antibodies are triggered and destroy all the mast cells they are attached to, thus releasing an abnormally large about of histamine causing runny nose, itchy skin and other symptoms.

What Happens During An Allergic Reaction?

The reaction is caused by excess amounts of histamine being released rapidly. Here are typical effects: Histamine tries to protect the body by isolating the area with the allergen. Blood vessels shrink to reduce blood flow. This can cause drowsiness, unclear thinking and even organ failure.

As the cells and blood vessels shrink, the gaps they leave fill with fluid causing puffiness and soreness. This swelling can become severe enough to prevent sight, hearing, and breathing and make movement uncomfortable or impossible.

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Why do millions of people choose to make their allergies worse instead of better? Sounds hard to believe, but it happens everyday. Whether allergies affect you year-round or during seasonal changes, allergies equal fatigue, congestion, sinus infections and all-around lousy feelings. Yet, millions of people unknowingly aggravate their allergies just by using common everyday products that wouldn’t bother them if it were not allergy season. When you’re down and out, chemicals and strong scents make matters worse. You can sneeze all about it in this article.

Does Scent-Free Mean Sneeze-Free?

When an allergen is incoming (pollen, bee sting, ragweed, etc.) the immune system springs into action and fights off allergens, so it only makes sense that the more foreign bodies that enter your system like chemicals, pollution and strong scents, the harder the immune system has to work and thus the more tired you become. One fragrance may not affect you, but when you’re bombarded with fragrances, odors and chemicals all day long the numbers can add up. The encounter of these chemicals day after day during your allergy season can start to break down the immune system and make you susceptible to exaggerated allergic reactions such as hives or skin swelling. Allergy season doesn’t have to equal exhaustion, but you’ll have to pitch in and take a few steps to avoid immune system overload.

So, how can you do this? When you know your allergy season is approaching, adopt a scent-free chemical-free lifestyle. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to live in a bubble and make everything from scratch.) Take a stroll down the laundry aisle of the local supermarket and you’ll see perfume-free, allergen-free, and/or dye-free products. Why? Allergies, sensitive skin and asthma are a growing epidemic in this country and manufacturers can no longer ignore the need for scent free and chemical free products.

Everyday Cleaners to Avoid During Allergy Season

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What are the common symptoms of lactose intolerance/milk allergy?

Many times the terms “milk allergy” and “lactose intolerance” are used interchangeably, creating confusion among people. However, they are different health conditions with different causes, symptoms, target groups and different treatments are needed to offset their effects. It is therefore imperative to outline the differences between these two terms.

On one hand, when we talk about “food intolerance,” we refer to an adverse reaction of the body to a food substance or additive that involves digestion or metabolism (breakdown of food by the body) but does not involve the immune system. Lactose intolerance is an example of this. It occurs when a person lacks the enzyme (lactase) needed to digest milk sugar (lactose).

On the other hand, “food allergy” is a reaction of the body’s immune system to something in a food or an ingredient in a food –usually a protein. Cow’s milk, eggs, wheat, and soy are among the most common sources of food allergies in children. Milk allergy is caused by an abnormal reaction of the immune system to the proteins present in milk.

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